Tis Femina
by Sythe
Summary: Naruto had gone to his last battle with Madara fully prepared to die with his enemy. He did not think he'd be manipulated by old toad sages and thrown to the far past. He did not expect to wake up in the Senju clan compound either.
1. Chapter 1: Last Entry

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Part I: Senju

**Chapter 1:**** Last Entry.**

I've been having these weird dreams lately...of dead people coming to me.

A few years ago they used to cry and scream about '_what the hell was I doing fucking up things so badly?_' or '_it's all my fault and I've got to pay_'.

Now they don't.

Jiraiya was the first to come. He'd just stand there looking at me with this stupid grin on his ghastly pale face then he'd tell me '_keep it up, don't lose hope_' which is ridiculous of course because what the hell do I need hope for now?

Sakura and Tsunade usually come in pair, wearing twin look of fond exasperation. Their grimace-looking smiles looked strange on the translucent canvas that is their skin. But that's okay cause' at least they aren't crying any more. Instead, they'd just keep reminding me of stuffs, trying to make sure that I 't_ake care of myself and remember to practice my medical jutsus at least once a day_'.

Now, the thousand years toad sage is a bit tricky. I have no idea why he'd come at all. We weren't close enough. In fact, we haven't even met face-to-face, only through the words of other toads. I wasn't even there when the Bijus tore into Mt. Myobokuzan and massacred the whole toad village. But here he is, dozing on and off for most of the times in my dreams. On the rare occasions when he's lucid enough, he'd watch me from his great toad throne, mumbling on about '_prophesized child_' and ' _harbinger of revolution_'.

I can't escape him. He's just there, throughout my dreams.

There were others too: the rest of the rookie nine, my faithful ANBU who used to guard me days and nights, Konohamaru and his team, proudly wearing their too early field promotion to Jounin on their foreheads and that same stupid grin on their faces.

They said to me '_Come on Naruto. Go on. Fight!_'

I can't understand them. I can't understand them at all.

Fight for what? For the crater that used to be my beloved home? For the people whose graves upturned by my war?

Fight. That's all I'm doing these days.

Sleep. Heal. Eat. Fight. _fight. Fight_. **f**I**gH**t.

No time to think. No time to cry. I have to go on. I have to run. The next battle is just around the corner.

Confusion. Questions. questions. Questions.

I still can't understand them. Can't...

But it's okay. I'm sure I'll find out.

I can just ask them. Yes, I should ask them.

After all, I'm coming to them soon. Yes. Tomorrow.

The last fight waiting.

I'll meet them again. Then, I'll ask.

Last entry - Uzumaki Naruto, Rokudaime Hokage.

* * *

He woke up to a numbing pain and a permeating sense of wrongness.

It wasn't from the stone 7 by 10 room he was in nor was it from the boy hovering above him, looking down with clearly startled eyes. Instinctively, he tried to move but found he couldn't. Instead, the muscles on his neck bulged and a piercing pain flared in answer.

"Don't." Said the boy, holding his hands out high to show that he wasn't holding any kunai or ropes. There were yards of stained bandages on his hands though, and their other end was wrapped around him.

His head ached and screamed.

wrong. _Wrong_.

He tried to twitch his toe but came back negative. A finger. Also no. The pain was coming from his torso but the rest was numb. He couldn't even feel the bandages being pulled from his body.

The pain cling, wrapped around him. Pain?!

He could feel pain! That meant he was alive.

**Alive.**

The word jarred and for a moment, his mind was still, stunned with shock and horror.

"It's alright" The boy patted his arm in a soothing gesture. "You're safe...from whoever did this to you."

_'I did this to myself'_

"I found you in my garden. I thought you were a corpse. Turned out you were still alive. A miracle that."

The boy was done with his arms and suddenly he was closer, his palm closing in on his forehead.

"You don't have a fever. That's good. We won't have to worry about that. I'm going to remove your mouth piece. Try not to swallow."

There was a click and wet slurshh. He felt something hard and cold being unlodged from his throat. He peered at it over his nose. A tube piece? They were feeding him through a tube piece. How long had he been here? Had his body atrophied? A few years maybe.

"Now, try to make a sound."

Numbly, he obeyed. The sounds coming from his stiff tongue and mouth were hoarse, the words mutilated. He could make out the faint 'a' and 'e' but the rest was a jumbled mess.

"Which clan are you from? We can try contacting your family to get you back."

Family?!

An alien feeling rose along with the word. He hadn't been asked anything about his family for a long time now.

"..da...a~al...all died..." He struggled with the words, trying to force them out one-by-one. The need to confess pressed down on him. His fault. They said. His.

Wetness stained his face, running down along the curve of his skull. He felt the patchy area where they wet. Was his hair shorn off too? Or perhaps they had burned in the fire of Amaterasu. He found he didn't give a damn.

The memory came, unbidden.

The world burning down around. He was screaming. Kyuubi was screaming. Madara was . Kamui. The red Sharingan spun. Bijus closing in. One, two,....eight of them. His Rasenshuriken howled in return, feeding off the chakra running through the mountain of seals around them.

And the world danced merrily.

"...I ha...hav'...nu hom to return ta..."

The room wavered, closing in. He could see the boy's face falling, the eyes, a warm wood brown, averting from him.

'_I don't need your sympathy!'_ His inside screamed hoarsely.

He wasn't supposed to be alive. That he remembered. He was prepared for his death. Everything was ready. Just like how his father had sacrificed himself to save Konoha, now he'd sacrificed himself to save...well...not the villages, for there were no villages left. But he knew there was still people alive somewhere..There must be....in Taki, in Claw, somewhere. There was no hope for the rest of the shinobis, but the hiding civilians...he knew some were alive.

He was going to die but he was taking Madara and all the Bijus with him. He would rid the world of them both. He was going to see his family again, except he had failed.

....failed....

And now he was here, alone in god knew where.

His eyes stung. He could feel the tears matting down his hair.

"Sleep" said the boy. "You'll feel better when you wake up."

Sleep? Yes. He couldn't take this now. His exhausted mind wasn't up to the task. Sleep...

He let his eyes droop and the world went mercifully dark around him.

* * *

The great toad sage was in front of him again, bobbing his head as he whirled the gray mist around him with his gnarled smoke pipe.

"I remember you. Yes. You're that child, the one I saw. Though..." He faltered here, his bleary eyes squinting as if trying to get a better view at the tiny blond in front of him. "...you do appear a little different."

Another dream? Again. When was it going to end? He fisted his knuckles, trying to find something else to stare at instead of the wrinkled old toads but there were no one else except for the vast land of gray mist around them. He was feeling sick in his stomach, sick of all the cryptic messages, sick with the knowing looks, the prophesies, the tones, sick with being constantly in the dark, of having to question himself again and again.

"Shut. up!" He snapped suddenly, pushing the words from his mouth in guttural growls. " I don't want to hear your yabbing right now." The great toad blinked, his pipe drooped down. The look on his face brought him a tiny flare of vicious delight but it was short-live.

"You know what I'd like to do to you right now? Sitting on that fat ass of yours, smoking that weed, droning on about prophesies and shits, like you actually have half a nut about what's going on outside, to us, humans!" He swung his arm, pointing a finger accusingly at the toad. The anger bubbled, pressing in his chest.

"Shima-ma was right. I should never have listened to you...you..."

"It's all because of you. I believed in you..." His words faltered for a mere seconds. "I believed in you and Jiraiya and that stupid prophesy of yours...I believed I could change the world...that I could bring peace..."

The toad stared at him and his pointing fingers, chewing thoughtfully on his pipe.

The ground wavered beneath his feet. Why was he doing this again? Why was he here? Why wasn't he with his family? He was so tired, so tired. He wanted to sleep. He wanted this long day to finally end. Why couldn't it all stop? Why couldn't he die along with Madara? Die. Why did he survive? There was no one alive but him. He was alone. Again. He wanted nothing more of this. No more fighting, no more shinobi, no more anything.

The world should be rid of him.

"Look at me..." the words came out hoarse and shaky even to his own ears. "...I changed _**nothing**_. I brought nothing but death and war..."

Tired. Exhausted. His feet ached from the running, his hands stained from seal inks. He knew he was only laying blame on the old toad, doing the same ol' "finger-pointing" game but he couldn't help it. He'd hoped for too much, fought for too long.

This war was consuming him.

"Do you see it? Do you understand? I **made** people believe in me. They died for me, died smiling, believing that they'd helped me."

...every single one of them...

"...please! Just...just go! I don't want to see you. I can't deal with your demands right now."

He stood, staring numbly at the toad, the anger and frustration he's bottled up already bled out from his previous battle. He felt hollow without it, bereaved off the drive it used to give him. This wasn't his enemy. The eyes weren't that black and red colours. This wasn't the man who had driven them both to the end with his cursed vendetta.

"Are you quite done yet? Children these days, so quick to blow up!" The toad huffed once, shaking his massive head at him.

"Are you still waiting for one of yours to come and replace me? Well, I'll tell you this now: no other will come to you, except me. Have you realized, child, that this is no mere dreams of yours?"

The mist churned around him, rippled then lightened into a familiar blue tint. He realized it immediately.

Chakra?!

He was standing amidst chakra fog?

"There. I see you have finally paid some attention to me. Have you calmed down yet or perhaps I should postpone this talk, hm?"

The smoke pipe swung and all of a sudden, he was high on his tip toes with his chin being pushed up, his face weakly glaring eye-to-eye with the toad sage. The clay bowl of the pipe burned hotly under his chin, fanning the smell of opium into his nostrils.

"I admit that I don't know you as well as my students, however, remember that I too have lost...I'm sure you know. Shima and Fukasaku were my only students. My best. Gamabunta..." He sighed at this "...Gamabunta was my grandchild. You're not alone in this Uzumaki Naruto."

"That behaviour, although I understand it, are not going to help you."

The toad finally let go of him before the heat and the smell from his pipe became too much.

"You asked for peace. Peace. Yet you detest the pain that comes with it. No peace comes for free, Uzumaki Naruto. Or are you so arrogant to think that peace can be achieved so easily? So worthlessly? Do not cheapen your comrade's sacrifice. They did not die just for you. They died fighting for their belief. Or..." He paused here, his once bleary eye unnaturally bright and calculating. "...or have you forgotten what it is you fight for? Too many brawls have finally muddled your brain, perhaps."

"No! Of course not!" He denied vehemently. How could the toad even think that? He'd lost his mentors, his friends, his family, and even himself to this war, for the peace so sought after. Wasn't it enough? What more could be asked from him?

"PAIN!" The toad rumbled. "Pain is necessary. Your adversary had taught you that if nothing else. It is payment you must give for the price you asked."

"Why?" His voice trembled as he forced the words out of his mouth. " Why are you telling me this? It's all over. Madara is dead. So are the Bijus. There's no ninja left in this world but me." And if he had any say about that, he would end it soon. There was nothing left in this world for him. Let him be the one to write the end note to ninja history.

The toad was silent, studying him from above. This conversation was thinning him out. He did not want to be here.

"Is that what you think?...You do not understand." Started the toad. "You have never understood. You were born in a time when you had to ask for nothing. You've never seen what started the shinobis or why we even started at all. **But I will make you**."

"You see, I've watched you for a long time now. Since you were quickening in your mother's womb in fact. I looked into your future and what did I see?" He shook his wrinkled head, snarling as he did so. "You fight a losing war where the end is destruction of everything. Your victory is moot. Your fight came too late to change anything, if at all. Your comrade is dead, so is my brood and so am I. There is nothing alive left on this earth. Nothing but dirt and rock! But I, I am not satisfied with that. Unlike you, I want to live and I want all of mine to live too. I think you'd want the same wouldn't you?"

He looked at the toad in muted horror? He'd destroyed everything?

"I've foreseen your last battle since years ago. I was prepared. Can you remember? The last technique he'd used on you?"

Of course he remembered? How could he not when every minute of it was etched onto his mind. Kamui.

"You can't mean that."

"Yes, I do. What would you have done if you were in my place? If I had let that gone on, you'd have been dead, torn to pieces and sent to a dimensional wasteland. So...."

"Do you take me for a fool? It is impossible to send a living creature through time space." He'd know. He'd tried many times before, devising humongous seals in the hope that he can somehow undo everything. But all the things he had sent through either hadn't made it or had come back dead, their body decomposed down to the cellular level. Yet as he said this, he felt a glimmer of hope. Could the toad have done something he was unable to? He might. He had lived for centuries after all. And if his experience with Kyuubi was anything to go by, beings of that magnitude, that age and power, detested death. They had gotten too used to living to accept it.

"Ah, but that is the crux of thing isn't it? You weren't creature enough to die then." As he said this he lifted one webbed hand to swirl the air in front of him. The mist churned, thickened into a reflective surface.

It was somewhat distorted and foggy but the thing inside was clearly not him. The air stilled for a moment as he stared. No, that could not be him.

"Are you afraid of yourself, Uzumaki Naruto? You shouldn't be. You've been granted a rare power."

He gritted his teeth. The creature mirrored him, crushing its fangs together. Its eye, thankfully, was still a familiar blue shade.

"Rare power? I am a monster." He gritted out.

"Don't be stupid. You've simply become something else, a being more of chakra than of flesh. That saved your life and soon, ours too. What did you think would happen when you killed all the Bijus, huh? Their bodies may be dead but an energy amount that massive wasn't going to just disappear off the face of earth. And then there you were, in your sage mode, too busy sucking in all that chakra to actually notice the difference. Bijus, monster as they were, are still a part of nature, you know."

The toad sage laid a hand on his shoulder in a gesture that was supposed to be soothing.

"Don't be afraid of yourself. You've done something not even the Sage of six paths could do. You've devoured...no, assimilated all of the Bijus. And don't be so quick to hate. Your body may not be entirely yours now but your mind is the same and if you want to stay human, you know that no one could prevent you from doing that."

"You make it sound so easy. It's more trouble than it's worth." He wasn't stupid. Any normal shinobi might look at this situation and thought it a blessing. But Naruto, who had housed the greatest of the Bijus for more than 26 years, knew better. If only one beast was enough to shoot his chakra control to hell for 16 years and require a perpetual seal on hands to make sure he didn't go berserk and kill all the people he was supposed to protect, then what did having the chakra of all the Bijus mean now?

He shuddered as he thought of all the possible scenarios. He might very well become a second Ten-tailed demon if he found himself unable to cope with the power. He might not even need to lose control to cause problems. He suspected a simple unpowered-up Rasengan from him would now be a lot more trouble than it was.

Could he control it? There was no use but harm if he couldn't. That, and he hadn't even taken into consideration his medical ninjutsu, all of which required precise control of chakra. He'd never managed to fully develop his control without a suppression seal when he'd only had Kyuubi to think about. He'd surely need a seal now, a massive one, if he wanted to make any use of the humongous amount of chakra and trouble that he'd just gotten.

He pulled a hand to his face and watched the creature did the same, feeling an odd mixture of emotions along with the gesture, a little bit of fear and a little bit of hope. And uncertainty...

"Yes, it will be a problem." Said the toad, still hovering above him. "But anything worth fighting for is always problematic."

"Do...Do I look like this outside too?" He asked as he studied the creature in the mirror. It was humanoid enough to pass for human and it looked like him. But he doubted he could do anything if he went around looking like a mass of condensed purple chakra. The thought of having to maintain a constant henge for the rest of his life like Tsunade did just wasn't to his liking.

"I doubt that. This realm of mine was designed to reflect the spiritual mind, the chakra source of people in it, not their flesh. Though, if I were to guest, I'd say your body would have been changed somewhat. Try to keep an open mind. You might even like the result."

Easy for him to say. He wasn't the one having to anticipate some weird modifications to his body, a few extra limbs perhaps, a third eye, maybe even a second head. Once again, he scowled at this new revelation.

All of a sudden, the mast of gray mist churned and thinned between them. The toad looked at this in alarm.

"We don't have much time left." He looked at Naruto who was glaring right back with exasperation.

"Now, listen to me. I've sent you back...well I'm not quite sure of the exact date..."

"What?!"

"...time isn't the same when you're at my age, but I know it is far in the past, your past, at the root of all conflicts in your time. You shall have all the time you need to prepare. And prepare well. Remember, your sworn enemy, Madara, is only a symptom of what has since long been there, a disease that comes with being human, another Pein. He is...most like you..."

The toad ignored his incredulous stare.

" Do not be hasty in your judgement. Watch and learn. And..."

The toad's eyes opened wide as if to make a point even when his body was slowly but steadily fading into the vast greyness.

"Do not turn from your destiny. All your comrades have died just to bring you to this point. This is the turning point in you battle. This shall be the last thing I can do for you. Do not waste it."

And he was gone.

* * *

The moment the two persons, a middle aged woman and a plain looking man, entered the room, he knew he'd get nothing from them.

They both paused momentarily at the door, staring at him with downcast eyes and slumped postures that told of trained servitude, before gingerly approaching the small bed he was on. Their clothes, robes of ratty gray hemp, rattled noisily as they moved.

The man put one callused hand under his back and another at his knees, and with one mighty heave, picked him up from his mattress.

"To the bathroom." The woman commanded in a harrying voice as she skulked behind them.

His head hang limply to a side as he let them carry him out through a lit corridor without protest nor question, one hand swinging off to a side. A short and uninterrupted walk later, they entered a different room, this one made of woven bamboo instead.

A sense of restless unease gripped him like a vice as the man positioned him on a gurney to a side of the room before hastily exiting. A large wooden tub filled with water sat beside the gurney.

He watched the woman worked, buzzing about him the manner of a bee around a heavily pregnant stamen, readying pots and bottles. Thoughts race through his mind as he observed her dark gnarled hands.

'_Servants, the both of them. And what stiff posture_.' A normal peasant shouldn't have been so nervous around a wounded person like him. These were trained and trained servants naturally didn't come cheap. Despite his ability to be as lethal as he wanted, Naruto knew he didn't pose an intimidating figure, lacking in height as he was. There was only one explanation. Whoever had taken him in was either extremely wealthy to the point that they could own numerous life-long servants regardless of their up-keeping cost....or, and this one he was leaning more to, they were trained in military arts. At the very least, enough so that even servants like these knew to be wary.

He noticed the woman advancing on him, a sharp pair of scissors gleaming in her hand. Immediately, his chakra bubbled in response, roiling angrily beneath his skin, just waiting to be unleashed.

'_Steady!_' He growled in his mind, grappling for control. It obviously wouldn't look too good if he were to accidentally blow up the servant of whoever he was indebted with because he couldn't control his overloaded chakra system. The need to be in more control of the situation gnawed at him, demanded that he do something, like grab that woman and start shooting off questions, or maybe just jump off the gurney and start running, but he persisted. First, because his body was currently unable to comply with either options. Second, he had no clue as to where he was? who was holding him? and most important, was their intention hostile or friendly? Thus, if he moved rashly now he might do more damage than good.

His options were limited, but what he needed to do now was try to assess the damages done to his body and wait until he could see someone who could give him answers without jeopardizing himself any further.

His yukata came off with a tug. The woman slid the edge of the scissors underneath the bandages and started her cutting. She worked diligently, hands moving noiselessly in a practised ease that could only come from routines repeated a thousand times over, always making sure to lay her eyes anywhere but his face.

So, his first assessment was correct then. It was futile to try and strike up a conversation. Perhaps 'slave' was a better term to describe what she was. One of those who had served for so long that every notion of freedom and equality had long since been chased out of their mind.

And _**that**_ pitched the question of when exactly was he?

He'd known from his experience that behaviour like this only occurred in the most harsh, most war-torn period where death and poverty reigned supreme and freedom easily sold for a meagre chance of survival.

He knew of only a few times that would qualify. The great shinobi wars would probably be his best guesses.

Satisfied that he had, at least, dug out the first solid clue as to his own whereabouts, he let his mind relaxed. His eyes lazily traced the woven pattern of the ceiling. Though there was no sensation coming from his lower body, he could still feel a draft caressing the bare skin on his chest as more bandages were shorn off.

When she was finished with his bandages, the woman picked up a water-filled hand-pot and started washing him, starting first with his head.

He sighed blissfully as warm water and fingers threaded through his hair and kneaded his scalp. God, it had been a long time since he'd had a decent bath. Though it embarrassed him to admit it, he must have stunk to heaven when they found him. Plus, it was good to know whoever was holding him thought him important enough for this sort of treatment.

The hair washing was done a little bit too soon to his liking. A hand pushed itself beneath his neck and back and slowly lifted him into a sitting position.

'_This is it_' He thought to himself.

From the time he'd woken up in the stone room, he'd been unable to survey if there were external changes to his body as he was laid lying down on a low-raised wood pillow where his eyes couldn't go pass even the tip of his nose. As a result, he'd been burning with anxiety since then. The old toad's words and the dismaying thoughts of finding his body plus a few extra appendages swam tormentingly in his mind.

Finally, he was sitting up with his back leaning on a section of the wall. Slowly, a bit hesitantly, he directed his gaze downward and promptly sucked in a strangled breath.

.

.

.

The good thing was he hadn't sprouted any extra hand or leg, and his skin though slightly flushed held that distinct tender shine that only newly re-grown skin after a bad burn could have. He noted with some mild irritation that his seal tattoos have also been shed off along with his old skin.

The bad thing, however...

Naruto stared dumbly at the gentle swells of breasts sitting defiantly on his chest as if they really had any business being there. His gaze slid a little further down, past the expense of smooth creamy skin dripping with droplets of water, to rest on a decidedly non-male sex.

For a dizzying moment, he thought he was dreaming a bizarre dream in which he was somehow stuck in his oiroke form.

The thought was destroyed as soon as it was birthed. It was too slender, the chest too small and the limps too soft-looking to be that of his provocative oiroke. To add to that, the servant woman was still diligently washing his body with a fistful of sand and water. Her rough fingers and the grains of sand elicited goose bumps that ran along his torso, a sensation too real to be that of a dream, or felt by a semi-henge form. His pink-tipped nipples hardened in reaction, much to his muted horror.

A chill ran through his body...

..wait..

..body?

No. What was he thinking? This was not his body. His body was tanned, corded with wiry muscles, and strong...and male! This thing was anything but.

No. Though it looked deceptively human, this was a body created by demons.

A demon's body.

He remembered having read this exact same scenario in one of Jiraiya's numerous raunchy titles. In which a young shinobi's jutsu backfired on its user and turned him into a woman. The plot then veered towards hair-brained and copious amount of lesbian actions aided by uncountable number of adult toys. It was played for laugh. Naruto, however, didn't even feel remotely like laughing now.

A demon. The ultimate tailed beast had touched him. Had touched him more intimately than he'd touched any of his past lovers. Had crawled its fingers into him deeper than anyone else had and changed him.

Kekkai genkai that transformed. Techniques that changed the user's body. There was something deeply intrusive about them, like the way Kimimaro's blood-speckled bone-white spine and rib-cage had slithered right off his back, or the way Ukon's weaken body had crept near, nearer, and then **into** Sakon's until only an extra head hanging from the back was the only out of the ordinary note.

It was the difference of looking at mangled corpses on the battlefield and waking up in your bed sweaty and naked next to a cold dead body.

A little too close. A little too personal.

It was how he was feeling right now. Invaded. Vulnerable. Ripped off of his identity. He resisted the urge to giggle deliriously.

As if in response, something stirred, undulating beneath the bottomless pool of his chakra, then laughed quietly.

He gasped. His body strained with the need to move.

"Please!" he managed to croak weakly at the woman, watching her body stiffened at his voice. "Get me out of here"

* * *

Some times during their walk between the bath house and his room, Naruto managed to wrestle back some semblance of control of his wayward emotions.

If there were any doubts before this, they were now gone. The Toad Sage was proven right...and wrong at the same time. He hadn't quite managed to destroy the tailed beasts as he'd planned. Something had remained of them, as the undeniable fact that he was sharing his body with something not quite human and he had no real clue to what it was. Perhaps one of the Bijus had managed to survive, or maybe it was only their imprints like how his father had been, maybe the great Ten-tailed itself or maybe something else all together. Something told him that he really didn't need or want to find out.

He tried to ground himself to reality, to concentrate on something, anything. The dirt gray smooth panes of the walls, no windows, built to contain, to cage, obviously modelled with a well done Doton. The sparse gurney like beds and crisp white sheets paralleling his. The overpowering scent of chemical sterilizer underlined with the bitter tang of moist death that hadn't quite left yet.

A typical shinobi infirmary. Yet his mind couldn't quite wrap itself around this little fact yet. It was too hard feeling like he did now. A strange sense of disconnection. He felt as if he was looking out from the eyes of another person, twitching and moving someone else's body. He might as well have.

He was a woman,... and probably part demon.

He decided to push back thinking on it.

It was at this time that he experienced what was probably the several most unnerving minutes of his life, thoughts juggled and raced in his head, interspersed with panic, indignant anger and derision that he didn't want to touch on, then...the door opened.

A boy walked in, tall with a peculiar gait to his stance.

Naruto's eyes latched onto him immediately. He knew this one. This was the same boy who was tending to him earlier.

_Very well then_. He thought quietly to himself as he watched the boy moved with a grace, though slightly hindered with a limp, impossible to ordinary peasants. _You'll be the one to answer my question._

"A shinobi..." He said, voice crisp. The boy paused about two steps to his bed, a look of surprise on his face.

"A shinobi like you. What do you want from me?"

Ten years ago, he probably wouldn't think of asking this sort of questions. No, at that age, young and full of impossible dreams, he would have probably thanked his savers then carried on unquestionably, unthinkingly. But time had changed him. Now he knew not to demand ideals out of people.

"Don't bother." He cut in when he saw the boy about to question him. "The clothes you wear. Too good for a peasant." And they were, though of a uniformly dark colour not normally seen in the wealthy-and-prone-to-flaunt's clothings, soft and fine-woven. "Your hands are callused. That's not a little lordling's hands." Calluses on the inside of the palms and fingers. Those did not come from writing with brushes. Those were sword calluses. Too familiar for him to forget. He'd gotten many of that same blisters trying to improve his Taijutsu and weapon handling. " And..." He gestured with his eyes towards the boy's legs.

"I bet you just had a little scuffle too. Been limping, haven't you? You hid it well."

The boy stared at him with something akin to wonder on his face, then it broke and his lips quivered lightly into an amused half-smile. He pulled a stool close then settled down by Naruto's bed.

"I...guess I'm not going to be able to introduce myself like I thought I would." He set a box, light brown wood carved with leaves patterns on the bed, then offered him a tentative smile.

"I heard from Enpitsu-san that you woke up. I thought you'd be hungry so I brought you something to eat."

The blond jinchuriki blinked slowly. Now that he was paying it some attention, there was a definite smell of inviting warm broth wafting gently from it.

Feeling a bit like he just kicked a puppy but still yet undeterred, he turned back to the boy.

"You still haven't answered my question." His voice was softer now, but it still held an edge. Though the normal protocol of his days would be to detain the unknown shinobi in a special isolation ward for both care and surveillance, he doubted it would be the same in this time line. If his guess was correct then it was irrational for a war-time village to take in a near-dead invalid unknown such as him. The time and resources wasted on him could have been used for one of their own.

Unless they wanted something from him.

The boy sighed resignedly, seemingly to have given up on trying to have a politely civilian introduction.

"My father would like to know which clan you are from, and about your enemy. I was the one who found you so you became my responsibility."

He nodded in acceptance. Security reason huh. They probably wanted to know who could have gotten pass their guard and picked a fight in their back yard without their knowing. Probably wanted to know if he were still around too.

"He's dead." He said simply. " And what happened to me?" He needed to know the full extent of the damages done to his body. Whatever the changes the Bijus had done to him hadn't managed to heal him completely. Perhaps it was the change, or the journey though time space itself that wrought it. He'd had a few guesses but they were blurry at best, helpless as he was.

He watched the boy face tightened momentarily. It was that bad, huh.

"Go on. Don't pull back." He coaxed gently, somewhat reminded of a different little boy who used to call him "boss", followed him everywhere when he was in the village and encored his cry-baby act all over him whenever he came back from a particularly gruesome battle, bandaged up to his hair lines. Konohamaru had always been a bit of an emotional one. It was one of the reasons why he never wanted to make him Jounin in the first place. He was just a little bit too bright, a little bit too full of sunshine and laughter, a little bit too much like a different young Uzumaki to be condemned to spend his youth out on the battlefield. And little Moegi who had been pregnant at the time. In the end though, Naruto had been forced to be cruel.

The boy wavered lightly, then gave.

"We had a healer checked you. I ...well...he said...you won't walk again."

He went cold with dread.

It was the worst possible scenario. His spinal cord had been damaged, possibly several other tendons too if the uncoordinated movements of his upper body were to be considered. Though his own self-healing power was great in its own right, not even someone like Tsunade in her prime days could say with 100 % certainty that she could heal nerve damages. They were too delicate and too complex, he'd come to learn after numerous failed attempts and guilt trips of his own, requiring absolute precision over the overwhelming regenerative power that was his one advantage. His now half-demon body had probably healed incorrectly, like broken bones not set right.

"I'm sorry" The boy whispered softly in an attempt of consolation but he paid him no mind, too busy thinking about something else.

Could he fix this? was the million dollar question. He gulped softly at the chance of success he had. The key to this was his chakra system which was now so heavily overloaded it felt like being suffocated to maintain a perpetually tight rein over it. Never mind rigorous healing procedures, if he so much as made a bunshin now, he'd probably blow himself and the whole continent up. For all intents and purposes, his chakra no matter how large remained unusable and therefore useless to him.

And there in lie the crux of his problem. He was now a veritable flesh sack, able to neither heal nor defend himself. He was fixed in a 2-way tie. If he could move his body he would be able to draw a seal array to tame his berserking chakra. If he could use his chakra he would be able to heal his broken body. But now he was incapable of both. Whether he could recover depended entirely on the people currently harbouring him. Which, eventually meant that he better made nice with them now.

Having made that conclusion in his mind, once again, he turned his attention to the still nameless boy, and, tactically taking advantage of his now female body, beamed a heavy-duty Naruko smile at him.

"That's nice of you. I'll be alright." He watched with some satisfaction as the boy's face blanked out momentarily and the tip of his ears turned an amusing shade of bright plum.

"What's your name?"

"I...I...ah..." Naruto half-expected the boy to say something along the line of 'I forgot' with the clear struggling look on his face. Interesting. Now he knew that his new form must at least pack some decent fire power in order to bring forth this kind of response. Finally, the boy seemed to have succeeded in gathering his wits together.

"I...I'm of the Senju clan. Hashirama is my name."

Say what?

He couldn't help the widening of his eyes as the meaning of the name zipped through him.

Hashirama? Hashirama Senju? As in the first Kage ever?

He stared hard at the boy, meticulously taking in the warm brown eyes and tanned skin on a face that still held traces of childhood. The hair was much shorter, looking more like a slightly ruffled and banged version of Sai's hair than the long tresses in textbook pictures. The lines of his jaw and nose were softer, lacking that characteristic hard determination that denoted the Shodai Hokage. His body, though tall for a teenager, was yet to come into the impressive 6 feet 8 inches height he was known for. But those would only come in time.

Naruto felt like decking himself over his head. How the hell was it that he didn't notice the resemblances? They had been taught history about the Kages since the beginning of the Academy. He himself had painted snot and dog crap on that face when he was twelve. Was he really that distracted?

This boy sitting beside his bed was a teenage version of the 1st Hokage. Warily, he tested the thought in his head. It seemed strange somehow, seeing the legendary warrior that founded the whole hidden villages system and fought on equal footing with Uchiha Madara **and** the Kyuubi as a teenage kid who blushed and stuttered in front of women.

The doubts came immediately.

Was it true? Could he be lying? Naruto saw no reason for him to do so. What was the purpose of lying about his identity to an invalid woman? On the other hand though, he had no proof to back that up.

...or did he?

The Shodai Hokage was widely known for his use of Mokuton...and his ability to control tailed-beasts...and Naruto was now one or as close as one could be.

There was only one way to test whether this boy was truly him.

Without warning he shot his one good arm out and gripped at the boy's exposed wrist.

The answer to his question slammed into him with all the force of a half-ton sledgehammer. Immediately, he lost his grip on the now identified Hashirama Senju's arm, panting and coughing heavily from the echo of the contact.

It was cold, ice cold but at the same time scorching hot as it ran through him. The boy's chakra. His body, the body that was reconstructed after his journey through time itself, quaked from the contact, somehow recognizing on an instinctive level the familiar presence of chakra that should not belong to a human. His own demon chakra had beaten a hasty retreat, emptying itself from his coils and leaving him impossibly light and reeling in the sudden imbalance.

Yet at the same time, another part of him had surged out in answer, crowing in sudden jubilation. He had heard of it from Fukasaku but never thought he would ever experience it after the death of Jiraiya, the one single Sage of his time aside from him.

Senchakra.

Who would have thought the first's Mokuton ability was tied to his chakra itself and not his DNA. But perhaps he should have thought of it. Out of all the elemental combination, the Mokuton was the single bloodline which had genuinely birthed an entirely new and independent element instead of being just a fusion of the parent elements. It was the only bloodline which had failed to be transferred to direct descendants of the original owner. Out of the sixty babies injected with the DNA, only one was not turned into miniature trees. The Mokuton was undoubtedly one of least understood blood-limit just after the famed Rinnegan.

"What was that?" The voice that intoned this question had lost that light-heart note at the beginning of their conversation. He turned his attention back, reading clearly the smidge of wariness that now tainted the corner of Hashirama Senju's eyes. The air between them suddenly tense and crisp with underlying threats.

Well, damn.

He hadn't thought he was going to react so strongly – or more accurately, he didn't think much at all, his mind overwhelmed with one earth-shaking surprise after another in the short span of one day.

Finding out he had survived a battle he had gone to all prepared for sure death. Finding he'd been flung into the past by meddlesome old toads. Waking up to a demon body literally drenched in berserker-mode chakra...with boobs of all things attached. Then finding out he was currently sharing his space with the legend that started the whole world he lived in.

No. He didn't think at all, that he had to admit. He was reduced to merely reacting from his experience alone. Perhaps he could have tested the validity of the boy's identity in a different, much less obvious way but then... what was done was done.

And now...how was he going to fix this situation?

His breath slowed, gradually losing its haggard pace before finally settling down into an even tempo. He studied the young Senju with his eyes.

What was he going to tell him? That his chakra, apparently laced with Senchakra, had simultaneously suppressed Naruto's demon chakra and drawn out the senchakra that was now forever a part of his body. Or Why is it that he could be demon, sage, and human all at the same time?

He didn't think the Senjus would take well to that, or any relatively sane person for that matter. At best, he would be called a liar, at worst, thrown into an asylum... if they had one around here.

So his only option then was to lie.

Slowly so that he would not alarm the boy, he rose his hand up, forefinger pointed inching forward.

"You see..." He began, diving inward to call on his own Senjutsu now no longer tied down by its demonic half, silently revelling in the calming effect of nature's and now his own energy. The tip of his raised finger glowed a pale purple before touching the back of his hand, the amount of Senchakra enough to get a reaction but too small for anything else. Hashirama drew in a sharp breath, obviously recognizing it for what it was. He didn't draw away but simply sat and stared.

"...I didn't think I'd ever meet the one person who has almost the same chakra type as me...so I was just checking."

He studied the young face before him, grinning lightly as the doubt quickly fled only to be replaced by a boyish wonder.

It wasn't truly a lie, more of an omission of truth but it would do. If other people found out, best let them think he was somewhat similar to a Mokuton user instead of what he truly held now.

"I just thought that you would be...you know...older." He meant to say 'taller' but that would make him a hypocrite, and furthermore, whatever his age was, the Shodaime sure looked fresh-faced as a teenager. He completed the effect with an amused smile, adding it out of sheer trickster's instinct.

As expected, the teenage Hashirama stilled all of a sudden, then exploded.

"I'm a man!"

"Of course you are." Naruto agreed demurely, already trying to pull a grin from his face.

"I...I'm seventeen!" He looked a little bit less sure as he said this.

Was he now? The jinchuriki felt his lips widened against his wish. He turned his head to hide his blooming grin a bit too late.

Boys will be boys after all even though they would grow up to become legends. Who would have thought the Shodaime, the famously calm and wise first Hokage, of all people...

There was something reassuring in seeing for his own eyes that even legends were human too.

"Y...you didn't have to act so surprised." Hashirama grumbled in barely disguised embarrassment, trying to regain his composure. Hopefully in the process, he'd pay less mind to what actually happened and accepted Naruto's explanation as fact. He didn't know yet what was the full effect of this connection, that would require more observation, between them but he couldn't very well let it get out that using Senchakra was a sure-fire way to either throw him off course or suppress his chakra now could he?

"So now you know who I am." Said the Senju, instinctively puffing out his chest and straightening himself up, trying to look older, more mature. "But I still don't know you. Who are you?"

The question brought him to an immediate halt, echoing in his mind like the vestiges of a ghost. Not over a week ago, all the people on the continent knew who he was. Blond hair, blue eyes, whisker marks. The two Jinchurikis, him and Bee, weren't likely candidates for subterfuge missions and even less likely to mix in with the crowd given their personality, their fashion sense and their duties at the time. Everyone had known who he was, had raced either for his head or for his assistance against the freely raging Bijus.

Uzumaki Naruto wasn't a name that anybody had to ask...for some years now.

As trivial as it was, somehow, the question seemed to tug at him, make him more...aware wasn't really the right word but he couldn't find any better.

This was not Konoha.

This was not even Suna which he had worked for and defended, or even Kumo where they had rested the last leg of their long journey, or Iwa, or even Kiri. After the years of collaborated effort between the five major villages and the two-front war against Madara and his Bijus and the alliance of the lesser villages, he had come to know the continents like the back of his hand. They had discussed strategy, supply routes, escape tactics over maps, had enforced them in real life. His Kage Bunshins had combed the countries.

This wasn't anywhere he had ever walked or known before.

He was alone in a strange land.

He opened his mouth but no word came through. He meant to give a fake name. It was almost instinct to do so. Something simple. Like 'Shi', or 'Yuu', or even 'Hana' given his female body now. Common, duplicated in the thousands, not at all attention-gathering names. But the name stuck in his throat, unable to get out.

His father had given him this name, taken from the first novel penned by Jiraiya who had, in turn, borrowed the name from one of his student, Nagato. And years later, it was Naruto using his name to get through to Pain, drawing the inevitable connection that looped the generations back to them. And Uzumaki, the only memento left of his mother of whom nothing else had remained. It was to this name, which held both his father, mother, sensei, enemy and perhaps brother-in-mind, that they had christened him Hokage and trusted in him to protect them.

A whole legacy of four generations rested in a single name.

Naruto Uzumaki.

It was funny how such a small and inconsequential thing as a name, the same thing that ninjas readily discarded without a glance for the sake of their missions, could hold so much of a person.

Perhaps it was where he was now. Or perhaps it was the fact that he held nothing to himself in this foreign world, not the clothes he wore, not his body, not his chakra, and definitely not his own mind, under which that darkly amused chuckle still lurked.

"I...have no name." He breathed out a heavy sigh, feeling an unspeakable weight on his chest. The boy's eyes widened in quizzical surprise. "Call me whatever you want."

There was a tense momentary silence between them. The young Hashirama fidgeted, already sensing that he'd broken an unspeakable barrier but not knowing how or why. Finally, he asked.

"Wouldn't you like to eat something?"

Naruto glanced tiredly at the box still sitting beside him. It seemed ungracious to decline but on the other hand...

"I really appreciate this. But...I really don't feel like I can eat right now..." He had no idea whether this body would accept something like human food and he wasn't about to try and find out in front of any one.

"If you would please allow me a bit of peace..."

Yes, some privacy now would be much welcomed. He had a lot to think about, confusion to work through.

Hashirama simply nodded, a look of understanding in his eyes. He got up to his feet and with another good-bye nod left him to his own.

Alone and undisturbed in the room, Naruto thought long and hard about the events that had transpired. He thought of what he should do to take full advantage of his current situation. There wasn't much for him to do now when he couldn't even leave this bed but there was definitely something.

Senju clan. There was not much known to the public about the founder clan of Konoha and even less of their legacy was left intact after the invasion of Pain. The village hidden in the leaves had never truly been rebuilt.

The presence of Hashirama's kekkai genkai could be useful to him. If nothing else he could at least use it to keep his more destructive abilities in check while regaining control of others. He thought of this as he willed his nature-tinged chakra to run and coated the length of his body. Though his control was waning by the minute as youki gradually trickled back into his system, his chakra moved with an ease that he'd only been able to achieve with the aid of seals.

Yes, there was a way out of this.

What he needed now was an opportunity and for that he would have to wait.

* * *

Fortunately for Naruto, the wait wasn't very long though it was no less agonizing.

No one came into the room except for the servant woman, again creeping on tip toes around him. She took away the broth – which he had vaporized some off with his chakra to give the expression that he had at least touched it - , changed his soiled clothing and cleaned his body with a wet towel.

The overpowering stench of feces and urine coming from the loin cloth and the stark realization that they were his came like a slap to the face. He probably shouldn't have been surprised yet he was. Spinal cord injuries came with a myriad of complications, one of which was the total loss of all bodily function in the injured areas, including things like bladder control. The patients usually had to wear adult nappies and be carefully supervised.

He had been leaking shits and pisses for days without knowing.

No. He knew it, had supervised the practices many times. Despite the fore-knowledge, the suddenly deeper understanding of what it truly felt like for his patients drove into him like a knife.

He couldn't remember ever feeling so weak before. True, he had seen it all, had treated many of them but....to be put into this position. With Kyuubi by his side, he had never truly had to worry about injuries before. They never stuck. Not a Chidori to his lung. Not a Rashenshuriken in his palms. Not Amaterasu burns. Not Tsukuyomi after-effect. Nothing could keep him down for long. He was the veritable juggernaut...

Being carried in someone's arms, being washed, cleaned, and clothed like a newborn baby.

This new-found experience proved almost unbearable to him.

He persisted. If nothing else, this complete and utter helplessness only fuelled his desire to be healed, to be returned to who he was. Healthy, strong and able.

The chance to do so came sometime during the night, after the woman had taken away his uneaten dinner.

The ruckus began in the corridor outside of his room, sounding of thundering footsteps, panting, and shouted orders. The door slammed opened and a mess of hands, legs and heaving black-clad backs stumbled into the room. A man slunk in through the gap, pulling a wired box in his gloved hands while rapidly shouting orders.

"In! Get him in. Get him on the bed! You! Go get the water."

He moved his head to get a better view.

The tangle of hands, feet and backs turned out to be a group of four men all holding down another man in the middle who was thrashing in the hold for all he was worth. The man – a patient? A clan member? A prisoner? – screamed a choked, pain-filled cry. White foam gathered with sweat, tears, and saliva in clots around the corners of his mouth.

The gloved-hand man, a medic Naruto realized, yelled again as he rummaged through his medical supply.

"Bind his mouth, bind it, you fool! Or he'll bite his tongue off! Where is my water?"

They did as was told, just in time for another person to enter the room.

The expression on Hashirama Senju's face when he laid eyes on the bound man was one of barely suppressed rage and terror. His shoulders quivered as he held himself back with the restraint of a person who knew he could do nothing but wait.

"Strip him" Ordered the medic as he pulled out a whole arsenal of silver testers and generic antidotes.

Naruto's eyes roved over the man's spasmodic body as it was rid of its clothing, meticulously taking in the details.

The man's skin, though riddled with scars and bad burns, was abnormally dry of sweats, his belly distended like prune-color balloon. Water retention?

He eyed the heavily dilated pupils, the excessive amount of drools, and the irregular heart beat. Poisoned? But what type? He could see no new puncture mark on the skin so perhaps a poison that can be swallowed, breathed in, or soaked through the skin membrane.

"Hashirama-sama" The medic said grimly after a full fifteen minutes of futile testing. "Your father..."

_And here comes the verdict_. Naruto grimaced.

Unlike that of civilians, Ninja's hospitals were generally of an uncomplicated, unfussy procedures. For the medic, it was either a "yes, can cure" or a "no, sorry". Ninjas, after all, tend to not have the luxury of dying because of old-age, or diseases complications.

The medic shook his head, but instead of offering his condolence....

"He'll suffer. The poison is keeping him lucid. It might be better..." And he gave the young Senju, a mere boy yet at the brink of manhood, a meaningful look.

History had told that Hashirama Senju, the first Hokage, had taken over the mantle of leadership at a young age, becoming the Senju clan head after the death of his father. Naruto had thought he was going to heal someone else, a minor ninja, and used it as a bargaining chip to require greater help from the Senjus. He did not plan on changing the course of history so soon, and so unknowingly of its consequences. But as he watched all the life drained from Hashirama's boyish face, he made his split second decision and vowed never to think back.

He sure as hell wasn't going to watch a son order his father's mercy death.

"I can heal him."

The room stilled the moment he said this.

"Wha...what rubbish. A little wench like you." The medic croaked incredulously, shaking his pepper-sprayed hair.

"I can heal him." He said again, loud and clear. "Bring him to me."

Hashirama Senju wavered for a second before... "Do as she said." The four men moved.

"Hashirama-sama, you can't be serious! This...this wretched woman can't possibly.

The young Senju glared at him, a hint of steel in his wood-brown eyes. "Or do you want to kill my father so much, Kenji-san" And that shut the medic up.

"Come here." Naruto called out to the boy. "I'll need your help." He closed his hand around the approaching Hashirama's wrist, welcoming the returning control he'd definitely need. Hashirama, in turn, closed his hand in a firm grasp around his wrist.

"If you lie to me..."

Naruto looked him in the eye, and suddenly he could see how this boy could one day become the man who'd lead the ninja world out of its dark age, who could even instil fear and respect in someone like Madara Uchiha.

"Don't worry. I'll save him." The link of senchakra between them spiked as if sealing the promise before he finally let go.

Naruto turned his attention back to the dying Senju leader. He held out his one good hand above the man now lying beside him before forcibly calling out his retreating youki. With only one arm working, he wouldn't be able to do hand-seals; he'd need the youki prehensile attribute to make up for it.

His hand glowed a pale purple, steadily solidifying as tiny amounts of youki was filtered in. The glow grew in size, fanning out like a halo before fully enveloping the man.

Immediately, the spasm and the drooling stopped. The man was suddenly deadly still, his breath slowed, dragged-out to abnormal length; his heartbeat ceased from its mad tempo.

"Wh...What have you done?" The medic, Kenji, screeched but Naruto paid him no mind. He was too busy trying to figure out what kind of poison was inside the man and if he was going to have to call on his demonic regenerative power to substitute if the needed antidote took too long to brew or required too obscure ingredients.

"You have killed him."

He shot the rambling medic an annoyed glance. He'd forgotten what a joke the medic nins were before the advent of Chiyo of Sand and Tsunade of Leaf, but to not be able to even recognize iryo-jutsu when it was being used...Or did they have medical jutsus at this time at all?

"I'm buying us time. That was a stasis jutsu." He explained, not wanting a hysterical half-baked medic anywhere near his critical-condition patient. "Slowing down his heart rate, breathing, blood stream, his whole biological system. It will take much longer for the poison to take effect."

But something was wrong here. He could find no trace of any alien substance in the man's blood stream. Instead of it...

His face spread into a crooked grin as he realized what was in the man's body.

"How devious. It is not a poison at all."

"What rubbish are you spewing? It is clear as day it is a poison..."

"The name is Trematoda. It's a type of parasitic worms found in fresh-water area. Its natural hosts are snails." He stopped Kenji's on-coming rant before it can begin.

"The larvae enter the host's body through skin contact. They travel through the body's blood stream to enter the stomach. There, they'll hatch...and eat their way out." He gestured at the man's swollen belly.

His listener's faces paled with his explanation.

"You've made one dangerous enemy. If it was poison, there will surely be an antidote..." judging from the look on their faces, they understood without any further explaining. There was no antidote capable of expelling a thousand tiny larvae from the body, and cutting in to hunt them down one by one was no solution.

"You mean...that you can't help." One of the four helpers braved the question no one else was willing to ask.

"I can help." He pulled his hand back. The stasis jutsu stayed firmly in place.

"You're in luck. This type of worms cannot live in an alkali environment. Have him drink lots of beer. My jutsu should slow down the worm's hatching enough for you. His urine will be black. When they turn back to a normal color then he'll be saved."

The four men, nin? Acted as soon as he was finished. The medic followed them out, eyes glazed over.

Naruto was left alone in the room with Hashirama Senju.

"Neither that worm nor its host snail is native to this area." He started. "You may want to look for your enemy in the Land of Water."

"If there's anything I can do for you…" Hashirama murmured softly.

"Don't. You should go with them. The extraction process is painful. We can settle our debts later."

Hashirama gave him a grateful nod then turned and left.

Naruto watched him go, a thousand thoughts crowed his mind. He'd made his first move. Now he was no longer just a useless invalid woman but a possible ally. Hopefully, it will be enough to bargain his way out of his condition and back to full health. With that thought in his head, he drifted to sleep, dearly needing that rest while he did not have to rein in his youki.

Though he didn't know it, but ten years from now, in almost the same area, he'd find out the mistake he'd made. For his decision to save the current Senju leader would in turn nullify the existence of Konohagakure.

Because of him and an act of mercy, ten years from now, the village hidden in the Leaves would never be built.

**End chapter 1**

I was started into the female Naruto genre by a fic called "Isane" (it was surprisingly well-written). After that, I tried to find more but lo and behold I could not find another decent female Naruto that weren't chockfull of Mary Sue, clichés, and Swiss cheese plot (no offense to the Swiss). So I decided to write one myself. The second reason is Kishimoto sucks at writing female characters. Seriously, you just can't find a kick-ass female character in his story that wouldn't be cut down to size later (coughTsunadecough).

I'm sure all of us have thought of it. What would it be like if Naruto was suddenly a woman. A character like Naruto (fully developed and still IC) in the male-dominated world of Ninjas. The sort of explosions he'd make will be a delight to see.

The part when Naruto found out he had a female body. Usually this is handled as funny or comedic in the fics I've found but I wanted to handle it from a different angle. Seriously if you wake up and find one of your leg has been cut off, I bet you wouldn't find it funny. Please tell me what you think of it. I really try hard (and the emotions are hard to grasp too) but it might just turn out to be 'Narm' or plain 'silly'. Well...I guess I can at least say I tried.

The reason for Naruto's proficiency at healing and why he was turned into a woman...will be revealed in later chapters. Since it is an integrated part of the plot, I can't really say it before hand except that it was because of Sakura that Naruto became a medic nin (she died).

I started out only wanting to write a short story but somehow the idea grew into this monster. This fic will be done in 3 parts: the first one dealing with the Senju (as you have seen in the part title), the second with the Uchiha, and the third one with the building of Konoha (or non-Konoha as the story goes) 10 years later.

The character's ages are: Naruto 26 years old, Hashirama 17 years old, Kenji the medic around 40ish, Hashirama's father nearly 40.

If you can, please write a critic to this story. I'm really looking forward to know what you really think of it.

If there is any grammatical, vocabulary or typo mistake, my apology. Since I'm not a native speaker (or even second-language speaker), my English might be a bit faulty.

P/S: I usually draw concept sketches for my stories. You can find the link in my profile page.


	2. Chapter 2: Red

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and any pop culture homage in this chapter.

Part I: Senju

**Chapter 2:**** Red**

"_Though we are in the bowels of Hell, we shall have the eyes of angels."_

Clive Barker, Coldheart Canyon

* * *

The first sign that all had gone as planned was when he was abruptly moved out of the stone infirmary and into a different though smaller but of obviously superior quality room in a different section of the Senju clan's underground fortress.

It was a private cinder-block quarter connected to what he now dubbed the hospital wing by a maze of corridors and through-chambers. As they entered the room he could glimpse the blue-clad back of his neighbour. The Senju insignia proudly inked on the cloth. The room was spartan in its decoration. There was a single framed window through which he could see a hint of sun light and smell the ghost of fresh air. A bed rose from the cold ceramic-tiled floor; a stool and a low table huddled near the window and a nondescript door led to what was probably a personal washroom.

It wasn't much but it told him things. Small things but of extreme significance to any person in his position. Like the fact that the Senjus now thought him of a bit greater importance. Now he was no longer another living corpse waiting to rot away to a communal death amongst the phantasm of a hundred others who had undoubtedly perished in that same stone room, perhaps on that same bed. Or the underlying trust that had allowed him the sight and layout of their inner quarters as he was carried to his new room. Tactical information he knew would be valuable enough to cost the lives of several jounins in time of war. After all, they could have just blinded his eyes or simply moved him to one of the adjacent private wards.

Small yet significant details. And they all told him of one thing: a bargain had been made.

The Senjus had accepted him among them, had let him live next to their kinsmen and not alone on a hospital bed. Whether he could make a full recovery now depended entirely on how far he could wing their trust and how hard he could push himself. And of that, Naruto had full confidence he'd succeed. He simply had no other choice. It was this or die. Die a meaningless, worthless death after the hefty price he had paid just to get to this point. Unacceptable.

Yet as all this happened, there was one thing that stood out, somehow becoming even more important in his mind than all the others put together.

There was a tree. A Konoha red oak.

.

.

.

On the heels of the initial shock of their encounter, Naruto couldn't recall whether he sensed, or saw, or smelled the tree first. Whichever way it was, its effect was the same.

If there was one word to describe it, it would be: squalid.

It stood alone in a courtyard sandwiched between two wings, spanning a humble height of a bit over six feet. Not nearly enough to be considered a proper sapling yet its mould-dusted bark spotted a filthy mud brown that wouldn't look out of place on withering old oaks. Thin, brittle branches lifted skyward. The effect gave it the image of a dog lifting his head sniffing the air for a whiff of sun light, the lack of which was probably the reason why it was so stunted in the first place.

Yet as pathetic as it was, the oak boasted its own cloud of leaves.

His eyes had followed the tree, turning his head a full one-eighty as the servants carried him through then away the indoor courtyard, until he could see it no more.

The vivid green of the leaves burned an after image on his retina.

By the time they reached their destination, he was a shivering mess. If the servants noticed, they probably thought it related to his ailment.

He waited simply because there was nothing else he could do, one arm clutching the other in a bruising grip, hoping that it would protect him somehow. The servants milled about the room, some moving in bandages and water bottles, some checking on the facility. None of them were aware of the hazy gray mist that had settled over them.

Why weren't they leaving? If they would just leave. He hated it when his freakishness was on full display. He'd always preferred to deal with his demons in private.

He drew in a shaky breath when the mist descended on him. Cold air pressed down on his body like the feel of a thousand invisible hands. Their touch as intimate as a lover's.

He didn't quite succeeded in stifling back a gasp and for this a nearby servant casted him a quizzical look before closing the top of a med box. They were nearly done now. Already, some were finished and at the door.

Just another minute. He told himself, staring in unease at the gray air veiling around him, not sure of what it was, but knew without a doubt that normal mist didn't move around like that...like it was sentient.

At least it's not doing anything aside from touching now. He consoled himself as he eyed the leaving servants, trying to appear as calm as possible.

What was this thing? Why couldn't anybody see it? Was it related to his demonic tenant? Or was it related to the nature energy he was currently emitting instead? If it was, then it was nothing like he had ever seen before. It was brought on by a tree, a measly tree, not even nearly deserving of its own name. But could there be something special about that scrawny oak? Chakra-fed by Hashirama Senju himself perhaps. But if that was the case then why was it so...pathetic?

The last servant was nearly through the door, his broad back blocking the frame, casting a long shadow that reached the foot of his bed. For a moment, Naruto wanted to call out, to ask for the Senju clan heir. Whatever this was, the Senju could help, and from the look when he was leaving after his father, willing too. But the moment passed in silence. He watched the man closed the door after him, throwing the room into shadow save for a single globe of yellow lamp light.

"It", too, seemed to know that they were finally alone with only each other for company.

He flinched as an airy hand settled on his collar bone. Another's fingers were crawling up his belly. He could feel its blunt tip digging into his flesh. One was cupping his left ear and cheek, trailing cool tingles down to his lips, then stopped, fingers poised to thrust in.

He lashed out his arm, spiking it with chakra. He tried squirming away. He even tried forming a half-grown Rasengan. The mist remained fastened to him. It did not wind its length over his mouth and nose. Its tendrils were on his neck, but the grip was more loving than choking. It was doing nothing other than touching him though it was obvious it could do more if it so wanted.

"What are you?" He hissed after a full fifteen minutes of quiet struggling. "It" didn't even pause.

Hashirama. Should he call for that Senju boy? But what could he do now? He was probably still tied down with his father and if he weren't, wouldn't asking for his help now the equivalent of showcasing Naruto's weakness? Him, the ill and helpless woman, waiting to be rescued. Ninjas detested the weak. He needed the Senju clan's respect and assistance. He couldn't just call the clan heir on a whim now.

So it was just him and "_it_" in that gray cinderblock room.

"For fuck's sake. .?" He was met again with only silence. Tingles ghosted the curve of his hip before disappearing down to where he could no longer feel them.

A minute passed. He laid motionlessly on the bed, listening to the wet staccato of his breaths. Shoop, shoop, hoo shoop. Bed sheets bunched around his flailing limps, their cotton threads moistened with sweats.

"...Kami, look what I've been reduced to..." molested by...what? air? And completely helpless...

What would anyone see if they were in the room now? A sad and deranged woman cursing thin air? It was suddenly hard to believe that he was holding the greatest tailed beast, the most destructive power ever witnessed in history, within this little husk of flesh.

His body lay lopsided after the struggle, curved in a half-moon arc. From this position he could see, for the first time since waking up, the stumps of meat that were his legs sticking out from the hem of his bunched up yukata. Unlike his right arm and torso, they weren't bandaged. Their unmarred creamy skin was on full display. Slender ankles. Small feet. Toes in neat rows and pinkies with little snubs on it. The nails clean. Somebody had apparently been taking good care of them.

In all manners of speaking, these feet were lovely.

However, there used to be a scar...

In one of his numerous run-ins with the unleashed Bijus, he'd received a scar on his left feet, courtesy of the Nibi's flame whip. It was the worst kind of scars, boasting scaly red nubs in a slash from the base of his foot to the middle of his inner ankles. It was one of the few injuries that had survived his regeneration, it being delivered by another Biju. He'd cherished it for the simple reason that it was the same kind his friends had worn. By the last leg of the war, they were all walking exhibitions of wounds, scars and missing bits. Ugly yes. But it was their particular brand of saying '_hey, we're the same_.' The monster's family.

The skin on his feet now were sleekly taut, no scar anywhere.

He stared at it as though to confirm. The feet, still no scar, stared back.

_Fuck...fuckfuckfuck this!_

He gave a dry choke once before balling into himself. Torso curled down so that he could look at nothing but his lap. Arms wrapped around knees. With the last bit of his fleeing control, he cocooned himself with chakra. The sizzles of youki overrode the ghostly touches on his skin.

'Endure' he commanded himself. For the sake of his friends, he'd survive this.

* * *

Before the door even opened, he knew it was Hashirama Senju on the other side. It was not because he recognized his footsteps or his smell – his senses were still too disoriented for those fancy stuffs - , but because of the promptly disappearing mist and his involuntarily relaxing body.

He uncurled himself from his half foetal position, turning his head so that he could see the boy coming in. After the mist, the hands, the dark gray-painted room, the sight of the Senju heir walking through the door, despite the shadow under his eyes, his sweat stink and his dragging feet, was perhaps the most welcoming sight ever since Naruto's awakening.

"You're back." He greeted, unable to keep that definite note of joyful relief from his voice. If Hashirama noticed, he didn't comment on it.

"How's your father?"

"He's fine. Tired but fine." Good. That'd make them pay attention when he started bargaining for his life.

In three long strides, the Senju was by his bed, looking down with dark sunken eyes. He didn't bother pulling a stool, but instead dropped himself right down on a side of the bed. Naruto watched without commenting, wondering if this sudden lax of formality was brought on by his obvious exhaustion.

"Mnhmm...and how's your clan affair?"

Hashirama looked up at this, clearly surprised by the question. Had Naruto passed the line? Was that classified clan info of this time?

"Peace" he brought his hand up, palm forward. "I'm just concerned. Things tend to get pretty rowdy in my ...clan if the leader is missing for too long." And rowdy here could be another case of Tsunade again, with its full entourage of coup, foreign invasion and angry daimyos. "Anyway, aren't you the acting leader now?" He held back the _'Since your father probably wouldn't be up and about for some weeks at least.'_

"I am."

"Shouldn't you be somewhere else instead of here?"

That got him a rose eye brow and a snort from the Senju.

"Does your clan let their guests interrogate them too?"

"Guest, sure. But not prisoners. Tell me. Am I your prisoner?"

They stared, both not entirely startled, but still watching intently for the other's reaction.

Hashirama was the one to break contact, turning his eyes to the window, to the door, then back to Naruto again. He was quiet for a moment.

"No..." He laid a finger on the back of Naruto's hand. Though the point of contact was small, the chakra sync was clear. There was not even a hint of disturbance. "...No. You're not a prisoner." He was not lying. Or at the very least, Hashirama didn't think he was lying and his chakra reflected that.

Naruto had no reply to that. Half because he couldn't quite believe the boy's words just yet, half because he was caught off guard. He'd only meant to use the bold enquiry as a dive test. The Senju heir was still young after all, and he'd have much more leeway with him than any other clan members. He never thought he'd get this sort of full-on honesty for an answer. And underneath that, there was something he couldn't quite catch. It seemed, just for a second there, something was revealed but it was in a language he couldn't understand.

Just as sudden as his bold declaration, the Senju heir withdrew his hand from Naruto. His back suddenly ram rod straight; face closed off as though he was mortified by his previous openness. Still keeping his eyes on Naruto, he stated.

"My father is the leader of the Senju clan..." It was a fact Naruto already knew. "You saved his life. Therefore, it is my duty to see that you are well taken care of. That said, if there's anything you want now..."

Again, with the formality. But perhaps that was to be expected from clan heirs of this time.

"Apparently, you saved my life. There's no debt between us."

"Nevertheless..." Said Hashirama in a voice that brook no argument.

Naruto eyed the Senju heir's posture. With his hands firmly planted on his knees, chin up and shoulders squared, Hashirama looked as though he wasn't going to budge an inch until he'd pulled at least one demand from Naruto.

In itself, this wasn't bad. But the truth was he was waiting to speak with the current clan leader. His demand wasn't trivial things like food, better rooms, or even money. His demand wasn't something to be decided on a whim, acting clan leader or not.

Other than that, he had no...well, he did want something, but even for Naruto, who had never had any qualm about letting his demands known regardless of the other party's lofty position, anything along the line of _'tie yourself to my bedpost until I figure out what the hell is wrong with me_' was probably not going to be well received by just about any sensible person. Though this was a period far removed from his own, Naruto was aware of the stifling customs of old, at least enough to know not to go and trample all over this period values of virtue. Even if the boy in question was young, too young, just a few metaphorical steps from childhood. Perhaps if he were still in a man's body, but not even then.

That determined, how should he reply? Or should he reply at all.

For a while, he toyed with the idea of letting his portable suppression seal in human form stay until he was simply fed-up and left when an idea hit him.

He turned back to a still patiently waiting Hashirama and spoke before he could change his mind.

"Take me outside..." then added after some consideration "...all these stones are suffocating me."

He had half a mind that this request would be refused but much to his surprise, the Senju heir merely nodded, as though he hadn't a care that he was going to reveal the location of his clan – which was truly hidden in this time - to a complete stranger.

Hashirama stood, stretched his limbs then leaned over Naruto, hands held out above his head.

"I'll need to bind your eyes."

Naruto already expected that.

The image of a set of hand-seals flashing before his eyes was the last he saw before he was suddenly plunged into darkness.

A sound, like the rustling of cloth.

He felt a hand gently pushing him up to sitting. Another rustle and something was draped over him. A coat. Was it winter outside?

Then he was lifted cleanly of the bed. Naruto blinked once, his eyes open but still unseeing. This body must be either smaller or lighter than his old body to be so easily carried around like this.

They went out.

He felt the door of his room by the rustle his yukata sleeve made against the wood frame.

It turned out that it was chilly outside. The stonework of the underground fortress only enhanced the biting cold. He wondered why he never noticed it. Probably because he was too distracted by the demon mist thing earlier.

Naruto concentrated on the sounds around him, trying to find navigation in the genjutsu Hashirama had put him under.

The footsteps were obvious but beyond it, there were others. The whistling wind in the nooks and crannies of the man-made cave. His and Hashirama's quiet inhales exhales. The heartbeat against which he rested his head. The drip-dropping of some near-by water source.

Somewhere past where he guessed the runty oak was, he felt a slight tilt. The footfalls suddenly grew cautiously slower and somewhat heavier. They were walking up a stair.

It was a long way up, with twists and turns that indicated the stair intersected with several others into a virtual air-born maze. The air itself grew lighter and warmer the higher they went.

Naruto wondered what was above ground. A village? A barrack? Or just a few shacks of houses for show and for the occasional guests? He wondered if he'd get to see.

The moment the stair became flat ground, a cacophony of noises rippled toward them. The pitter-pattering of other feet running. Clik-clakking of wood doors. The steel twang and hisses of swords against each other. The chomping, cracking, shouting, swallows and murmuring. Splashing of water. Sizzles of kitchen fire. Peals of roaring laughter. Whispers of a hundred voices. The rumbles of horseshoes on a field far away.

All of these the sounds of a human settlement, muffled though layers of walls and locked doors.

Naruto listened to them as though he was listening to the ghost of a distant memory. Close enough to not be entirely forgotten but too far to be clearly recalled.

He felt Hashirama stopping, fumbling with his hands. A door clicked and slid open.

For several minutes, the human noises were deafening in his ears. But the moment Hashirama took a step through the door, they dimmed down to hushes. It was as though the occupants of the room were trying to keep a polite facade in the presence of the clan heir. Or at least, it was what Naruto thought.

There was a thick musk in the air, an olfactory gruel of rancid male sweats, sword oils, pungent alcohol and freshly cooked food. He caught snatches of shop talk here and there, interspersing with deliberately quiet chewing, gulping, and spitting. Some people calling for more onigiri, others discussing about a certain Ichi who had apparently gotten himself into a bind with the local gambling lords. A mess hall of sort, but the size was huge given the fact that Hashirama had kept a quick pace since coming in and they hadn't yet reached the other end of the room after five minutes of walking.

Aside from a few greetings, no one approached them, no one asked who was the woman or where they were going. Naruto found this incredibly strange. Again, he revisited his prior thought. Attempted assassination of the clan leader, Hashirama's strange behaviour, and now this seeming detachment toward the clan heir. Something was going on with the Senju. Dissension among the ranks? Infighting? But he wasn't sure. Because of Hashirama's genjutsu, he couldn't see now. For all he knew, they could have been nodding or even making hand conversations with the Senju heir. It wouldn't be impossible. After all, he was the outsider here.

Naruto tilted his head to where he knew the crowd was located, in the center of the room and along the side of the wall opposite to where they were headed. He stared into the darkness from which the noises originated, running question after question in his head. If he could see now, what would be the vision? Cool, calm faces? Distrusting eyes?

All of a sudden, the dins died down, leaving an abnormal silence in its place. Saved for the steady footfalls of Hashirama, there was not a single sound in the mess hall. His eyes moved instinctively to take survey. What was going on?

He heard several sharp intakes of breath and the scuffle of someone falling down. His body tensed in preparation.

As if to placate his tension, the arm that was supporting his back shifted. The hand moved upward to close on his open eyes before gently but firmly coaxing him away from the crowd. Hashirama's voice sounded somewhere above his head.

"You'll get in trouble if you keep looking at them like that."

Like what? Naruto wanted to ask. Like a non-Senju? Or like a woman in a barrack full of shinobi? But this was neither the time nor the place to make a scene so he kept quiet, pushed his indignant irritation and his unease down, and let the Senju tucked his head in the crook of his arm.

They carried onward. The Senjus, seemingly satisfied that he was no longer staring at them, resumed their noise making.

Aside from this incident, the rest of their walk was uneventful. Naruto counted several layers of gates they'd passed, some guarded, some merely booby-trapped. Sometimes after they passed the 7th gate, the air cooled. A breeze picked up, blowing feathery kisses on his cheeks. They were outside he realized.

It was then that Hashirama changed his pace. Tightening his hold on Naruto, the Senju started making huge leaps. Jumping forward, right, then up, up, up.

Blades of leaves crowed as they flew pass the canopy higher, higher. He heard rocks falling, felt the pull of gravity on his body. His grip on Hashirama's arms tightened.

Higher still...until finally, they stopped.

"We're here?"

But where is here exactly?

They were obviously on a mountain of sort, with a forest below and open grass field far away. The geographic layout was similar to the plains of Hi no Kuni. But were they really in the land of Fire?

Hashirama took several steps in circles, as though looking for a place to sit down. When he finally found it, he settled down promptly. Naruto, unable to stand or sit unsupported, was in a half recline with back resting on one of Hashirama's arms. With the other arm free, he released the genjutsu.

Naruto blinked once, twice, then opened his eyes wide.

The Senju heir was speaking, saying something that sounded like '_I come here often_' and '_it's a nice spot_', but Naruto paid him no mind. In fact, Naruto could hardly pay anything attention. He was finding it hard to breath.

It was sundown on the forest. The light of dusk poured red, purple, and orange on the trees. A sea of green fire, burning far as the eyes could see. A fiery sunset. Up above, a hawk cried mid flight.

Naruto knew this scene. He'd dreamed about it.

It was the forest of Death.

He turned his head slowly, holding his breath in the back of his throat. If below was the forest of Death, then this mountain...

There it was, pass the face and the blinking eyes of Hashirama Senju. It was different. There were no gigantic stone faces carved into it, not yet. The trees here were younger, and the forest below still held claims over the rich earth before the coming of Konoha had cleared them off to make space for the stone faces and the guard towers. It was the difference of a hundred years time yet all the same; it was undeniably, unmistakably the Hokage mountain.

Naruto sat, unable to do anything but stare. His head was suddenly empty, a perfectly blank canvas of the mind.

He didn't know how long he stayed like that until a sensation broke through that canvas. A touch, skin on skin, on his cheek. He blinked, eyes following the sudden movement on reflex. A finger, attached to a hand inches away from his face. Wet. And a face beyond the hand, marred with a frown.

"You're crying."

Crying? Him?

He eyed the hand, brought his own hand up to his face. It came down wet and trembling.

From a corner in his mind, a thought resounded like well-trained reaction. Stop the water work, honey. Shinobis don't cry. But the voice was small and above it, there were a hundred others, all vying for his attention.

The trees beckoned, green with life. The night of his inauguration, they made merry. Barefoot girls danced in the moonlight.

Sakura, leaning by an oak trunk, wringing river water from her wet hair. He kissed the arch of her naked back, telling her he'd loved her forever.

In the forest where they made their stand, Kurenai was giving birth. The first cry of a child welcomed to life by the roar of a thousand soldiers as they tethered to their death. She kissed her baby goodbye as he sewn up her ruptured uterus, stumbling on bare feet back to the front line. His assistant handed him a leaf, as big as a man's arm. "Wipe the blood off." He said, half to the baby. "We ran out of bandages."

With tremendous effort, he managed to yank himself back to reality. Hashirama waited for him patiently.

"I..." He made the first attempt, laughing a bit through the tear. " ...I haven't been home for...for nine years now." There, that was better. That sounded half right, not like he was snivelling all over the Senju clan heir.

"They burned my home to the ground..." he stopped there, unsure of how to go on, unsure of why he was telling this in the first place.

He focused on Hashirama's face then. So young. In a few years, he'd grow into the face that had...would make history.

Sitting there, looking at the Senju heir, a sudden thought entered him. Its entrance like a red thread in the muddled water of his mind.

Kill him.

He went still, for a while disbelieving. But the thought crooned, its voice a sweet seduction.

_Kill him._

He breathed in, leaning lightly toward Hashirama. He could smell the boy's breath now, hear the pump of his heart. On his neck, the vein stood out, glistened with sweat.

_...killhimkillhim..._

A heat lighted in his belly, unwinding its length like a snake. He felt a strange feeling rise from within, an alien resentment he never knew he possessed... _Closer..._ That was it! It was this _**little wretch**_. It was this bastard's fault. If he'd just finished his job with Madara. If he hadn't let those sons of bitches daimyos ride them ninjas like cheap whores for one hundred fucking years. If he hadn't up and give off the Bijus to the other villages. Hoping for what? For bloody lies. Like some needy market cunt begging for a good fuck.

That was it. He should..._kiilll hiimmmm_...

He was close now. If he turned he could touch the Senju's face.

Release his youki. Let them devour the boy. Let them burn him inside out. Pull him down. Bite his neck. Claw his heart out. Tear off his tongue. Hear his cry. Eat his fear..._sweeeeet ecstasy_...Hold him. _Hold him_. Let him writhe to death in his embrace.

Naruto was burning. His body shook, wavering to and fro. He saw his hand - pale slender fingers - tracing Hashirama's collar bone, going up, up, to his neck. The nails sharp, like claws.

He was going to kill h...

A hand laid on top of his, ice cold on his furnace skin. A tendril of nature chakra spread like cool mist over him.

Hashirama looked at their entwined hands. He peeled them off his neck.

For a minute, they were silent until Hashirama moved. He laid both hands on Naruto's face, wiping his tears away, not knowing that death stood right behind him.

"Don't cry." He said softly, looking at him with wood brown eyes. Eyes like Tsunade's, that curved and lifted at the corners like Tsunade's. "I don't know what to do with crying women."

If he could, Naruto would have laughed right there. But for now, he was numb all over. Hashirama was still speaking, voice soft and slow like he was speaking to a child.

"If you don't want to talk about it, it's okay."

He pulled at Naruto's pliant body, situating him so that he was facing away from him and toward the forest, his head leaning on Hashirama's shoulder.

"Don't think about it. Just watch the sunset."

Watch the sunset? Alright. Naruto did as he told. He concentrated on the sun, the beautiful sun setting gloriously over the tree line. He could not pretend that nothing happened. Not after the extremities his emotional roller coaster had gone through in the last ten or so minutes. But for now, he'd just watch the sun and not think about how he'd nearly lost himself back there. Or how he'd very nearly killed Tsunade's grandfather. Tsunade, nagging at him for not taking care of his laundry at twenty-two years old and Hokage for six years running, who was like a mother and a sister both to him. Or how he was an inch away from destroying the future of the ninja villages.

For now, at least, he'd rest and recuperate, and pretend that it wasn't Hashirama Senju who was holding him but instead Sakura. His beloved Sakura.

* * *

They went back in after the sun had fully disappeared and the sky had darkened into a starless veil.

For the next several days, a routine was developed. Every day, he was fed three meals and bathed twice in his personal washroom. A female servant accompanied him with each bath, brushed his hair afterward and clothed him in a new clean set of yukata. They had taken off the bandages since he appeared to no longer need them. Hashirama visited him once every day, always in the late afternoon or early evening, and almost always garbed in full armour. Sometimes he'd take Naruto outside. Sometimes they stayed in and kept each other company.

Not wanting a repeat of the incident on the Hokage mountain, Naruto had kept his distance since then. He stayed close enough to feed off of the calming effect of Hashirama's chakra but just about. Their conversations remained short and to the point and never ventured to the personals. Naruto did not know if it was because the Senju heir was humouring him or because of the etiquette of this time, but either way Hashirama never started asking more than a few simple '_how are you?_' or '_what would you like to do today?_'. On his part, Naruto was just plain grateful that he didn't need to offer up any excuses.

On some of the days when they didn't go out, Hashirama brought books to his room and shared them with him. On others, he brought clay, and – sitting on a stool and table next to Naruto's bed – he started moulding little figurines. A bird. A tree. Dogs and little children. On one occasion, when he seemed to have run out of things to mould, he'd glanced at Naruto with dark dark eyes. The clay yielded in his muddy fingers, forming a lying figure.

For three weeks, counting the days by Hashirama's daily visits, the routine continued. On the start of the fourth week, the guest Naruto was waiting for came. The Senju clan leader.

Despite his hope, this meeting wasn't a good one.

At first glance, he could see that the Senju leader seemed to have gained ten years in the span of three weeks. He came in through the door, followed by Kenji the medic and a retinue of body guards, all men with their faces hidden by pale porcelain masks, showing only gleaming dark eyes. His strides were deliberately long and slow to hide the minute trembling displayed once every few minutes. The pale skin on his face sagged from his carved out cheek bones. The full armour he wore drooped a centimetre from his shoulders. They left the door open as they came in. Light, both from the torches and the sun-reflecting bronze mirrors, poured in over his back, painting his front in a mosaic of shadows that didn't help at all with his appearance.

Yet despite all these signs of slow decay, he stood almost too proudly staring down at the lying Naruto with hawk like eyes.

"I am Yoshizawa Senju." He spoke in a tone that made it clear that Naruto should already know of this. "And you are..."

"No one." Perhaps if the Senju leader had been speaking to someone else, someone that was not Naruto Uzumaki who neither was impressed nor had any tolerance for prideful power figures, he'd have received a better response. On his part, Naruto was holding back. If he were his usual self, he'd have no doubt given a far more flippant answer – like "_your mama_" for instance – but instead, he found himself refraining.

The obvious reason would be he was already in a tight enough bind and he really didn't need to add his ass getting booted from the Senju fortress on the charge of freely expressing himself. But beyond even that, the one real reason that stopped him in his track was the man, Yoshizawa, himself. His face was frozen in a perpetually stern expression, betraying nothing but his pride. It was strange seeing such expression for the mere reason that Yoshizawa's face, despite the pepper-sprayed beard and the harshness that seemed permanently carved onto it, looked like it could have been a carbon copy of a younger Sandaime Hokage.

Either cousin or close relative. He didn't even want to think about the alternative. He wasn't here to dig up dead people's mud.

"As I said, sire. The woman is..." Said the medic, shooting the Senju leader a look.

"The woman is what?" said Naruto, voice breezy as though he was talking about the weather. Then, he turned back to Yoshizawa. "My family are all dead. The name of a dead clan is of no matter to you. What matter is... what are you going to do to me now?"

Yoshizawa didn't react. His subordinate did the job for him. The body guards tensed. Kenji looked as though he just saw a woman for the first time in his life. Their eyes made clear their suspicion of him. Naruto, on the other hand, was completely unperturbed by their reactions. Women of this time obviously didn't talk like him. However, with men like Yoshizawa, Naruto knew, there was no use in playing yarn balls with pretty words. He'd be better off clear and upfront.

The man considered Naruto for a moment before opening his mouth. Before he could say anything however, they were interrupted by a rumble of noises from the hall. The thudding of feet running and someone's voice yelling incoherently. In a minute, Hashirama Senju burst through the door, two men hot on his heels. He still had his armour, smeared with dirt and scratches and red stains, on. With a nod, Yoshizawa sent the two men retreating.

Hashirama looked at the guards, to his father, and finally Naruto who was calmly watching the unfolding scene. He addressed Yoshizawa.

"Father...you're...alright?"

The Senju leader gave a dry snort.

"You should at least look at me when you're asking my health instead of at that woman."

"You're going to kill her." It wasn't a question.

Naruto tensed. His youki grumbled underneath his skin. He was right after all. Things were obviously not pretty in the Senju clan and he better prepared for it. With the fingers on his shielded hand, he drew a pattern on the sheet. This close to Hashirama, he had just about enough control for this but not much else. Luckily, with all their attention on the young Senju and his helpless appearance right now, no one would notice what he was trying to do.

"Yes. Maybe? That'd obviously give us less thing to worry about wouldn't it?"

"She saved **your** life." Hashirama snarled, his usual courtesy long gone.

"And you saved hers." Yoshizawa fingered the hilt of the ninjato on his waist, deliberately standing between Hashirama and the bed. "It will be quick. It will be mercy for her and less trouble for us." He wasn't even looking at Naruto as he said this. "Better that than the half life she's living now."

"I won't..." The Senju heir moved to reach his father and Naruto but stopped when four ninjatos screeched open from their scabbards. The Senju leader's personal guards had spread to a wide circle. They hadn't yet closed in on the clan heir but the warning was clear.

"Stand back! This is my personal concern." Yoshizawa bit out before turning back to his son. "You won't? Won't what?" He let the rest of the sentence hang as if daring the Senju heir to complete it.

There was a tense moment as father and son stared at each other. Kenji, seemingly the only vulnerable one among the Senjus in the room, had retreated to a far corner. The guards held their position. In the silence, an unspoken conversation went between the two Senjus, one young one old. Though he hadn't yet said a word, it was clear from his stance that Hashirama wasn't walking away. Yoshizawa too was solemnly quiet. His face showed nothing of what he was thinking of his son's defiance. They stayed like that for about a minute.

Surprisingly the Senju leader was the first to look away. He took a leisurely step back, eyes roaming the room layout. When he spoke, his voice, a rumbling basso, was in stark contrast with his pleasant words.

"You chose a good room." He made a gesture with his hand. "Nice air flow, not too hot but not too cold either. Close to all exits and to your own room. It must be easy to keep an eye on her. And servants..." He rapped a hand on the table, looking out through the window. "Two? Three? Or more?"

"If it weren't for this person you'd have died. The least I could do is be courteous..." Hashirama paused before adding. "...in your place."

"In my place? I see. I see..." He nodded once, twice before looking back at his son. "You're a smart boy. You've always been a fast learner. A mere three weeks and you're ordering your father around. What's next, Hashirama? A knife to my back? Poison in my water?"

And that was when the first crack appeared in Hashirama's expression. He started. "I..." But Yoshizawa had already turned his back on him.

"There are rules in the clan. Rules that not even clan heirs are allowed to break." He stopped then, his gaze landed on the watching Naruto.

"Woman...hah...hahah...Are you looking at him? Are you worried? My son. He goes out and kills every day yet he dreams of peace, of living peaceably." He spat out 'peace' as though it was a curse word. "That either makes him a delusional fool or a hypocrite."

Yoshizawa seemed to have forgotten other presences in the room. He was focused solely on Naruto and his son now. Though his face was unnervingly calm, his voice was not, and he was making a fist with his hand, squeezing it as if to make a statement.

"The clothes you wear. The food fed to you. This bed. This room. They are all bought on blood. Do you understand? We make our living on blood. What is a shinobi that doesn't kill? Or is that too low for you now?"

He didn't stop there. It wasn't because he didn't remember or he was too angry but because he didn't care that the medic, his guards and one outsider woman were watching, some more uncomfortable than others. From the way his eyes inspected his son's darkening face, the Senju head knew exactly the sort of damage he was pounding on him. It was all deliberate.

Naruto watched this unfold with a sort of shameful horror. There could have been anger too but he wasn't sure. He wasn't simply lying on the bed any more but on the side of his body, one arm propped up, the other hidden still hidden behind his back. He had his eyes pasted on the Senju heir who was staring down at his feet, his body unnaturally stiff.

According to history texts, Hashirama Senju was touted to be the strongest shinobi of his time, a wise and charismatic leader unanimously loved by his people. Well, according to Naruto, history books were a load of croak. People looked for perfect idols to worship, so naturally they never see what they didn't want to see, and even if they saw it, they erased it or claimed it lies and propaganda. Of this, Naruto had personal experience. By the second year of his tenure, the population of Konoha had experienced a sort of mass amnesia. No one seemed to be able to remember he used to be a sad lonely child who wore neon orange and the same neck-dirt for weeks just so people would notice him. They put it down in their books that he was under the secret tutelage of Sannin Jiraiya since he was five, never mind the fact that he didn't even manage to pass his Genin test for three years in a row. Two lies told for the sake of the nation and no one needed to remember that they were there; they watched history in the making and never bothered.

So why the surprise that the Senju's family life was apparently historically incorrect? Why the shame and the anger and the revulsion and why was it that he couldn't decide which one he was feeling more?

Was it the simple fact that it was the Shodaime Hokage, Konoha's first Hokage, that was getting chewed out for the legend he'd create later in his life? And by a bloke who never even made a paragraph in the course of history.

Or the sound of Yoshizawa Senju's rant itself. That certain rhythm and tone that suggested that this had happened before, more than once. And he hadn't guessed it coming with all the clues he had had until now.

Or the emotion behind it. That eerie combination of parental worry-induced anger and sheer relish that accompanied each verbal blow, all of them carefully calculated and delivered from father to son.

Or the disappointment. Oh, yes the disappointment. That Hashirama Senju was not at all the prodigal and beloved clan heir he was supposed to be but just a boy, a not-yet man, trying hard to survive and find himself at the same time. A dreamer who had that bad habit of dreaming all the right dreams at the wrong time. Dreams that were simultaneously horrible and wonderful in their promises.

If Naruto had a guess, he'd say a combination of all of them. He couldn't care less however. All he wanted to do, right there, was to crawl out of that bed, crawl out on all four if need be, and beat the living shit out of the motherfucker who thought playing mind game with his own child was funny.

Pity he couldn't do that.

Neither the crawling nor the beating.

For all he wanted to do to Yoshizawa Senju, now was not the time for emotions, no matter how well-deserving those emotions were. Now was the time for reasons and actions. And the one action Naruto knew he needed then was a change of plan before all things went to hell. If the Senju head wasn't going to play nice – and it was obvious that he wasn't doing that any time soon -, then by all rules of the game, Naruto didn't need to play nice either.

With that thought out, he adjusted himself, got a better grip on the bed frame, then let loose his youki on the unsuspecting Senjus.

"Don't talk like that. It makes you sound pathetic."

The youki spike did its job. He had the room's full attention.

"Too big words for you? Then how about this. **Shut-up-old-fart****.**"

Naruto gave the nastiest grin in his arsenal, relishing on Yoshizawa's reddening face and Hashirama's wide open eyes.

The guards moved, obviously trying to defend their master's honour but it was then that they saw what they had missed. Black lines covered the floor, spreading from under the blanket to converge on the sandaled feet inside the room, and from several startled shrieks, outside too.

"Kage Fudo no Fuin. Too slow to be used in combat but pretty nifty in situations like this eh. You won't move an inch without my saying so."

Technically speaking, they could still make some small movements and talk, and there were some loopholes they could take advantage of. But none of those would afford the Senju any threats against him. It was a seal he'd created himself based on the Nara clan's ninpo so there was little worry of a seal master of this time breaking it.

The medic made a half-moan, half-shriek sound as he eyed the vines climbing up his legs, desperately squirming in his spot in the corner. He, alone, possessed neither the expertise to know what it was nor the mental preparation to deal with it.

Naruto snapped.

"Zip it, Kenny." Then at the rest of the staring Senjus. "Now listen."

Then he laughed, suddenly realized what all this must look like. Four elite ninjas and a clan head, trapped like rats and at the mercy of a woman who couldn't even leave her bed unassisted. It was their ignorance and their blind assumption – that he was only a weak sickly woman swathed in cotton and wool blankets - that landed them on this spot. _Too bad, Senjus, joke's on you._

"I don't give a damn about your clan rules. And as far as I'm concerned, fighting for your dreams, no matter how insane it sounds, is still better than playing lapdogs for the daimyos any day. So don't think I'm going to listen to your barking."

Yoshizawa's face reversed their coloration from rapidly reddening to rapidly whitening as though someone was forcing a fist-sized ball down his throat and he was choking on it. Still, he remained silent, waiting for Naruto's next word.

"I'm bad at this diplomacy stuff so I'm going to make a long speech short. My clan is dead." _So I've got no one to spy on you for_. "My enemy is dead." _So no one is going to come knocking on your door, asking for trouble_. "Now the question is: are you going to die too?"

The reaction was instantaneous.

"Are you threatening me, woman?"

"Threatening you? Why would I need to do that? Somebody else seems to be doing a good job so far. Tell me. How long did it take to get all those worms outta you? Those need years to cultivate and is even harder to administer. But they aren't the worst. Someone out there wants you dead pretty badly. They failed this time but they'll try again."

Then he turned to the medic.

"And if lil' Kenny here can't help you the first time, what makes you think he'll be able to when they send nastier worms your way?"

All of a sudden, Yoshizawa was calm. He'd caught onto where Naruto was heading, and for him, this was good. This was familiar water. He spoke, voice cultured.

"You're proposing a deal. Your help for ours, is that it? So that we'd keep you alive and well-fed."

Naruto didn't much care for the well-fed part, but the Senju head was close. He started slowly, gauging Yoshizawa's reaction.

"I can heal mysel- Hey, buster! I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Too late. The furthest ninja from him cried hoarsely as the Kage Fudo built-in defence seared through his chakra core. A shuriken dropped from his limb hand, landing on the tile floor with noisy clanks.

"Geeze, didn't I tell you? But that's what men do isn't it? Never listen to women. Well, this woman wants to be listened to. Now!"

Exactly at the "now!", he released the chakra equivalent of an electric shock at all the Senju saved Hashirama. Two grunted, the rest was stoically quiet. It was needed after all, just to get his point across. Plus, he was getting antsy at the weak resistance they put up.

"So, are you paying attention now? Or are we going to play 'zap the mole' until I've got all of you fried up?"

"Alright! Talk, woman."

He ignored the slur.

"Just to make it clear, old man. I'm not planning on dying any time soon. I can heal myself." A soft gasp in the corner. "But I cannot do it alone."

"That...that's not possible! I checked you myself. Your thoracic vertebrae are..." The medic sputtered, but his last word was not 'broken'. "...twisted."

For a moment, he debated explaining what he planned to do to the medic but ultimately decided against it. Now was not the time. His first priority was to secure an understanding with the Senjus.

"It is possible." He pointed at the side of his waist and at a bump on his back. "Make a hole here and here. Use chakra scalpel to cut through, then reset the root nerves." Like how incorrectly set bones were reset. Break it new, then set it again and let it heal. Except this wasn't just any bone but the vertebrae, the crown of a human neural system. If he were optimistic, he'd say he had about 30 % chance of success. But at this point, he was past caring about chances.

The medic's eyes shone, like that of jackals scenting blood in the air. But at the same time, there was a crazed quality to it. It was a look that was greedy, _in awe_, fearful, _amazed_ all at once.

With great difficulty, Naruto dragged his body up, upper back leaning against the wall for support. He pulled back the sleeve, exposing his left arm.

"I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that's not possible. I must be lying because no one could do that. Or even if anyone could, the patient would die anyway. It will be easier if I just show you."

Chakra spiked on his right hand, forming a visible glove of purplish light.

"...chakra scalpel..." Kenji breathed. The word holding a tone that seemed more fitting for '_holy grail'_ instead of a required medical tool of iiryo nins of his days.

Naruto nodded absentmindedly, making a quick but deep cut on his arm. There was about a full minute of red blood oozing from the inch deep wound. When they slid off his arm, his skin was revealed – to the surprise of the Senjus – smooth and whole. Good as new.

"Understand now? I will not die. Not because of something like this. Others will but I won't."

That was a complete lie, but the Senju didn't need to know about that.

"So, now that you're convinced. This is what I want. One, put this seal on me."

He flicked a finger, The Kage Fudo shifted, drawing out a seal array that took up most part of the room. He ignored the speculative looks thrown his way. It was a chakra suppression seal. Not the most powerful he knew, but the most maneuverable. On other ninjas, it would reduce them to mere civilians, but on him, it would work as a stabilizer.

"You can keep it if you want. It's great for keeping ninjas prisoner. Free of charge. And two, give that man to me."

"...me?"

"Yes, you. You will be the one. In two months, I'll have you ready for the operation."

"Two months? That is...that is too short. That is crazy! I cannot..." The medic sputtered, obviously at great pain to admit his inability.

"You will learn." Said Naruto. "Or I'll turn you into a puppet."

"Puppet?"

"Like this." He wiggled his fingers. On cue, the medic pounced into a frenzied jig. "This is for short term. If I want it longer, I'll take your brain from your head and set a pattern to it. A bit messy but it works fine." Actually, it wouldn't. But from the medic's greening complexion, it worked great as incentive.

Finally, he turned back to the Senju head, waiting for his answer.

Yoshizawa stared back at him. He looked calm. His face held none of his anger, nor did it hold any inkling to what the man was thinking. He simply stared.

This way, the Senju could only profit and he knew that they all knew it. Not only would they be able to ascertain their leader's safety but they'd also learn an A-class suppression seal –which did not exist in this time -, and a multitude of powerful healing techniques unheard of before. What was the cost of taking care of an ill woman compared to that?

But Naruto had a guess, and if his guess was correct...

"I refuse." Came Yoshizawa's reply. The man was carefully watching Naruto's face for his reaction.

If the Senju head had been expecting surprised expression, indignant and uncomprehending yells or even anger from Naruto, he'd have been disappointed because Naruto gave none of these. In reply, he merely laughed.

"You...you are soooo predictable. You reacted exactly as I thought you would."

He put a hand to his mouth to staunch his laughter. The genuine surprise in their eyes was pure entertainment for him after the long weeks of solitude in his room. But this was not yet the bomb he was going to drop.

"I think you misunderstood me. I didn't offer you a deal. What I did. What I did is giving you an **order**."

Complete silence. But he was not at all perturbed.

"Lemme see if I got it right. You figured there's no need to agree. Because isn't it strange for a complete strangers to pop up right before your failed assassination, conveniently knowing the cure to your problem? Sure she said her clan was dead, but that's what she said. She's just a harmless invalid before but now she says she can fix it. So the result is: somehow this woman's gotten herself into the heart of your clan, gotten you indebted to her, and will soon be not so invalid anymore. Coincidence?"

He curled a finger into a question mark.

"Is she a spy? A sleeper agent? Or really just chances? You don't know. But you don't want to take the risk. Sure she's got you trapped here, but it won't be long. After all, this is your home turf. Your territory. She cannot kill you. Embarrass you maybe. Hurt you, sure. But if she kills you, she's as good as dead. So you figured you could just stall until she either runs out of chakra or your relatives to take notice and jump in. Whichever comes first. Maybe they're already here, just waiting for your command."

The Senju head opened his mouth but Naruto stopped him with a raised index finger.

"Oh, yes... Then there's the little problem of your attacker. Tricky one. Is it true? You think. Will they come for you again? Maybe. But it doesn't matter. You aren't the type to worry about being killed in combat. And whatever poison they send, this woman obviously knows the cure. And you have her in the palm of your hand, don't cha? After all, it's not like she can run away from you. Making her cooperate would be easy. Withdrawing food or the likes. I'm sure you're creative enough. In the end, you concluded. There's no need to agree to this deal. She's got nothing on you. You just have to keep her alive, keep her docile, keep her harmless. Like how they keep dogs for added security and for emergency meat. Am I right?"

The Senju head said nothing, but the corners of his eyes held a stiffness that declared to all that Naruto was spot on. He snorted, giving his first commentary on the Senju head's plan.

"I'd rethink that strategy if I were you."

He didn't wait for their reply. He had too little time as it was. Right at the end of his line, he released all the locks on his youki, pushing it – boiling, gurgling, quivering, gloriously crowing in the light of freedom – out into the open. If he had let it out like that, he knew he could cause a few weaker-hearted ninjas to die from the pressure alone (and probably go berserk in the process). But it was let out for only a single second before he firmly yanked it back in. The presence of Hashirama Senju in the close vicinity only made it easier for him.

For the Senju ninja the result of this one second exposure was a terrible whiplash to their core. He could see their faces, the bare necks under their masks paling, cold sweats running down. Their breaths became hushed ragged pants. Their eyes wide and shaken. Already, he could see one of them sagging bonelessly in the hold of his Kage Fudo.

He gave them a few minutes to collect themselves before continuing.

"Get it? I am dying."

He got a couple of uncomprehending blinks for that.

"A goodbye gift from my enemy. It's turning my chakra into slow poison. I'm holding it back consciously but it won't be long now..." Then he paused, looking inquisitively at the Senju leader. "You...ever seen a C bomb before? No? I'll tell you. It's like fire crackers. Except it's bigger. Got more fire. And it's bigger still if you put more chakra to it. A clan in Stone makes them. Their biggest one is C0. It can take out whole mountains easy but you don't get to see it very often cause once it blows, they blow with it too. Give it all their chakra. Kamikaze style. Now I'll tell you a secret. I'm that C0 right now. _All of me_."

He paused again to let them swallow it, let them remember just how much chakra he'd shown.

"So... how big is your mountain, dear? How big is it?"

A horrible realization dawned on their faces, too strong and too abrupt to be pressed down by protocol emotional restraint. He watched them. He didn't take relish in it. He just watched. And see if his message got through. He was ruthless. He wouldn't stop until they've got all the stuff he said lodged all the way to the back of their brain.

They were silent for maybe a minute until Yoshizawa spoke, somehow still keeping his voice even.

"The seal."

Naruto grinned, clapping his hand.

"Nice one! You actually listened." Then he stopped clapping. "Now that you know, we can get back to business. You thought you could refuse me. But it's not this little C-graded paint job that you're stuck with. I...am the living seal that you can't escape. So, what can you do? Think. What can you do?"

He held up three dainty fingers, reading out loud the Senju head's thoughts.

"One, kill her. Two, put a seal on her. Three, throw her out, as far away as you can. That's good theory, but you're not sure, are you? You can kill her but you don't know if that'll put a stop to the bomb. You can put a seal on her, but putting a seal on a seal master is like throwing kunais at a weapon master and hope that they won't come back and bite you. Your last option then is to throw her out. But how far? How far till the fire won't reach you? How fast can your shinobis run? How fast does it compare to her when she's not holding it back? When she's pushing it with all her might cause she doesn't want to die and she doesn't want to die alone."

Again, silence. And he knew he had some extra guests, stuck in the rim of his seal, screaming and squealing. Finish this, fast!

"Out of all three options. I think the third gives you the best chance. **But**. But...that would be war, between us. That'd be you and me in a fight. And..._Yoshizawaaa_..."

He spoke the Senju leader's name for the first time. Not so much spoke it but purred it, the way lovers might do. Up close and personal, as intimate as skin on skin, leaving no space for even a hint of lie. He truly wasn't lying there. His words came out slow and heavy.

"I'm a person who's got _**nothing**_ left to lose. Do you _really_ want to fight me? Do you _really_ think you can win?"

They stared at each other. On one side, a man standing at perhaps 6 feet 7, decked out in full chainmail and armour, looking down. On the other, a woman sat among a swathe of cotton and linen blanket and bed sheet.

It was then that Yoshizawa saw Naruto for the first time. Not the usual systemized process of look-register-dismiss but actually saw. And this, alone, put on his face an expression that stopped his guards from hurling insults at the imbecilic woman the moment she dared to insinuate that someone like him could lose a fight to her.

He was momentarily unsure of what to do. All his options had been read out to him and skewered right on spot. He looked at her, at her breezy cotton yukata, the soft creamy skin of her neck, the inviting curve and incline of collar bones peeking out from under the hem line.

"So, what's it gonna be, big daddy? Are you going to play balls with me or are we going to sit back and watch the spectacular fireworks on your ass?" She taunted. He saw the tip of her tongue, a glistening pink, peeking out from the crevice of her lips.

Then he felt a red surge of anger so sudden it surprised even him.

This frail, glass-like creature – who didn't even look like she could lift a clan standard issued sword off the ground – had threatened him. And he had felt it. Felt it! All the way through layers of mental armours he'd imposed on himself since he was a mere boy. He'd heard it like she wasn't on the other side of the room, on that bed, looking like a wet kitten stuck in blooms of cotton wool, but right beside him, telling him, right by his ear. So close he could imagine his hand reaching out to that slender neck and squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed, and laughed as he squeezed some more, and watched that blue blue eyes of her dimmed to a milky gray and...

He drew a breath in, tasting the soup-like texture of air clogging his nostrils, his throat.

The woman was still looking at him – with eyes that weren't milky gray – and she wasn't the only one looking. His clansmen waited for him, for either his command or his answer. And he shall give them one.

He turned his head and growled out. "Get out." Then remembered they were still held in place by the alien seal. "Let them out." He told her. "I'll speak to you. Alone."

And when they were alone, he spoke. "Woman." Look-register-dismiss. Unfeeling. _Safe_. It was good after all that he didn't know her name. He felt his anger drained, felt himself crystallized into his usual calm rationality. Good. That was good.

"I'll do what you ask, on one condition. Once you're fully healed, you'll leave. Leave this land and never return. Even under threat of death."

She smiled that smile again. The smile that cut, like glass, like ice, like she'd expected this except he didn't think she did.

"No problem, poppa!" She said, almost mocking.

He was out of the room before she could blink. The idea that he'd have to house this woman made his skin crawl, made him want to curl up and scream. He hadn't felt that since...since ten years ago. _Tobirama is almost nine now_. No matter, he'd have her out of his home. She can't play her suicidal card for long. She'd have to cave eventually. Out and never back again.

About five minutes after the Senju head left, Naruto released the seal on others. Immediately he heard the scuffles of people suddenly losing their balance, then footfalls, out and away. One going in.

In a few minutes, Hashirama Senju was standing at his door, casting a long shadow over the floor. He was looking at Naruto as though he'd just seen him for the first time, eyes holding a certain cool edge. And that made Naruto ached something badly.

This boy was the only link to his home whether he wanted it or not. This boy would hold his future.

He'd purposefully left him out during his confrontation with Yoshizawa. The seal had held him but he wasn't touched by any of its more painful aspects. And Naruto was sure that he was immune to his youki. He sure looked like he wasn't affected while others around him were shaking to their knees.

But now. Now, he would choose his side and he would surely choose his family.

Idly, Naruto wondered what he thought of him now. He asked.

"Are you afraid of me now?"

To Naruto's surprise, Hashirama shook his head. He walked, slowly, to the bed, then he laid a hand on Naruto's forehead and it was only then that Naruto realized he was sweating. His youki was trembling delicately under his skin, chased away by the Mokuton nature chakra. The seal and the confrontation had taken out from him more than he realized. He was obviously out of shape. He let himself slide down the bed.

Hashirama spoke then, and what he had to say was like a slap to Naruto's face.

"You were lying the whole time."

Naruto breathed in. He tried to keep it light.

"...you sensed my chakra."

"No. I didn't. You were too far away and I'm not a sensor...I just know."

Just know? What the hell sort of answer was that? How could anybody _just know_? And if he knew then why the hell didn't he tell his father? He narrowed his eyes at the boy.

The Senju heir was unaffected. Instead, he kept on speaking.

"You made it hard for yourself."

Naruto snorted.

"No, really. He wasn't really going to kill you. He was angrier with me. He took it out on you. Well, he's angry with you too now."

That made Naruto laughed. Because of how young Hashirama sounded. But there was no humour in his laughter.

"And if your father really was going to kill me? If I didn't do anything and he really wanted to kill me. What would you do then?"

_What would you do, huh, little boy?_ He thought in his head, waiting for the answer. _What would you do? Would you keep playing your honour game? Going against your father? Against your clan? Is it your faith? Is it strong enough for that or was it just teenage rebellion_?

But what he found in the answering gaze of the Senju heir was neither faith nor rebellion. It was something else entirely.

Hashirama withdrew his hand, then he answered, all of sudden sounding not so young anymore.

"I would ask my father for the honour of killing you myself." A long, long pause. "...then I'd sneak you out."

Naruto was speechless.

End chapter 2.

Initially I planned to finish part 1 of the story with this chapter but wasn't able to. This chapter you just read ended at about a half of the 'planned chapter' which was quickly ballooning to 25 k words size. I guess I really underestimated the story length. And to think when I was writing chapter 1 I wanted to finish the whole 'Senju part' in 1 chapter (that would be 35 k words for first chapter.) I probably would have died or broke my fingers if I really did that.

Anyway, with that out of the way, there's one thing I want to address with you guys. I'm pretty sure many have asked this. Why did I not put the warning of Fem Naru in the summary? There are 2 main reasons for this.

1/ I hate being stereotyped and I hate it even more when it's stories that are being stereotyped. I know full well what sort of reputation most Fem naru stories have to bear. The thing I found most people mistook is that Naruto being a woman is only an element of the story (though it is a pivotal element). It is not the whole story. I knew that if I had put Femnaru in the summary, people would immediately started labelling all sorts of unfounded thing on it without actually knowing what it's really about. Some people said (a bit more like yelled to my face but you get the idea) that Femnaru really just isn't their thing and their reading this story without being warned about it is like being duped (I'm sorry?). Others (a bit calmer) told me that Femnaru is like yaoi the easy way. I have to disagree. Personally, I think the premise of a gender bender is very promising but as of yet remained very under-developed. The obvious reason would be the majority of fanfic writers who wrote with this premise are prepubescent girls (if you're a boy, raise your hands). Hence their understanding of its underlying complexity is also 'prepubescent'. Anybody studying gender politics and sexuality would know the issues beneath its normal comedic face value. It's not just a guy suddenly growing boobs. It's a person being robbed of his identity. Every one of us was born either male or female and developed our personae and sexual identity accordingly but if you suddenly found yourself being robbed of your original body, then how do you cope? Do you change your identity accordingly? Do you change your body so that it fits your identity (as the case with many transvestites)? Or do you straddle somewhere in between? That's the drama underlying the issue. It's not comedic like how people usually write it to be, it's actually more horror of a psychosexual kind (one of the oldest and the most primal fear of human is of the monstrous feminine for a reason and that's what Naruto would have to deal with here) and of being erased (or in this case, castrated) by the new 'body'. And that's the direction I intend to take this story to.

This is why I wrote this chapter referring to Naruto as 'he'. I've always found fics writing the gender-bender character immediately after the change as she (or he for the other variety) to be unrealistic (gender bender aside). A person who has lived his life as a male for 26 years isn't just going to 'poof' into a woman overnight. Though he wore a female body, in his head he's still a guy especially in this case when Naruto can't walk, he hasn't yet felt the full damage. This body now is still just a torso with a bit of fat on the chest to him (he doesn't yet feel his missing 'man stuff'). And since I want to write this story as realistically as possible, the change will have to be gradual itself (and don't think Naruto is just going to warp into a girly 'lady'. His base characteristics need to be the same regardless of his sex). Other people saw him as a woman and he knew this, but instinctively and emotionally, Naruto himself doesn't acknowledge it. I think you already saw glimpses of this in this chapter: in between his interaction and his power relation (underlying sexual politics) with Hashirama Senju (a male no matter how young) and his memory of making love to Sakura (in which he is obviously a man...with intact 'man stuff'), in the scenes where I switched between the point of view of Yoshizawa Senju and Naruto without any warning or page break (going from _he_ one moment to _she_ the next). It was hard to adapt my writing (had to use an extremely fluid style of writing) to these inconsistencies between the characters but that's what makes it so interesting (and mega-migraine-causing). Consequently this makes the story a one-of-a-kind (I don't know about you, but I'm just up to my throat with all these time-turner story where Naruto goes back to the pass and kicks major asses and be all buddy-buddy with the mojos –Yondaime, Sandaime, Nidaime, Shodaime – of the past and does the hanky-panky with some swanky past ladies. This sort of story has already been done to dead, so lets just leave it where it should be. Which is dead dead DEAD!). Lastly (for this point), though I know that not everyone is a fan of Femnaru (and believe me many people have made sure I know this in the past 2 months), we are all fans of a 'good story' so...how about we all turn down the melodrama and the condescending attitude and just enjoy a nice read?

2/ I used the Femnaru revelation of the first chapter as a reader filter. When I started writing the draft for this story, I knew already that I was going to get the quacks for it. I've always wanted to write a story that really pushes the envelope, a story which deals with all kinds of taboos and perversions that others rarely dared to address and yet still possess a certain charm (as you can see, I'm literary auteur of sorts, the sort of Takashi Miike if you know him. I **hate** the ordinary). The problem is: I don't want to deal with a bunch of people on my head, screaming about how dare I write about these Satanic things, tagging along with the whole story. You see, these people are censors, agents of the status-quo so to speak. There's a bunch of them out there, and though they may have different agendas, they all basically want the same thing: for you to see the world they see...or to at least shut up about what you _do_ see that is different (Imagine that! A world where everyone is the same...like mass produced dildos. Thanks for the offer but I'd bite my tongue). I don't want to deal with them. Period. That is why I wrote the first chapter relatively vanilla with only the gender revelation as the shocker. I found that this tends to turn them away pretty fast and leave me to my peace and enjoyment. That said, I want to make this clear to you. I'm an independent working adult. I don't write (seldom anyway) the kittens and fluffy variety of stories (or the power trip, harem and dick-lit variety but you get the idea) that are the trend, ruler, and majority of this fandom (more like gangrenous cancer but ignore me mumbling mumbles please). The gender crisis is just the beginning. Hence why I used it as a filter. If somebody can't get over the fact that the main character's body is screwed up then they **can't** deal with the rest of the story (horror and dark fantasy). It's just better for both of us that we part way in the first chapter (or second if you found that you can't stomach it).

That said, you'll see that already this chapter is turning to be much edgier than the first chapter. It is much closer to the tone of the story, real and raw and full of teeth. And I have already changed the rating to the highest (I'd rather use NC20 but they don't have it here). So, if you found this chapter turning your stomach, you have your choice. Hit the back button. And both of us would be much happier.

But for the rest of you who's finding it hitting your groove. Then I'm all yours.

Sythe.

P.S: I sincerely want to improve my writing so all critics are welcomed. If it is possible, please tell me which scene you like best and which scene you hate, and why.

And lastly, check out the new concept sketches.


	3. Chapter 3: Bone of the father

Disclaimer: Do not own. Do not own. Do not own...

N/A: this chapter is dedicated to the people who helped me pass a major writer's breakdown in the middle of a crucial scene. If it weren't for you guys, this chapter would have taken a few more months to finish...not to mention a few more Xanax bottles (kidding). I can't express enough thanks.

Part I: Senju

**Chapter 3****: **_**Bone of the Father**_

_"And God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man"_

**-2:21-22, Book of Genesis, Catholic Bible-**

* * *

The next morning began his official stay with the Senju and the first thing that changed was how he was treated.

It was not worse per say. He was taken care of as usual, perhaps even more delicately. But it was clear from the tiptoeing of their feet, the glances out of the corners of their eyes, and the conspiratory whispers they thought he didn't hear that the servants were simultaneously curious and scared stiff of him. He figured some of them must have gotten caught in his Kage Fudo. That as well as the noisy spectacle he had engineered just the day before. He had no doubt he had become the latest gossip for the Senju clan grapevine.

Kenji came to him first thing in the morning, wearing the face of a man who wasn't sure whether he was walking up the stair to heaven or through the gate of hell itself. He was afraid of the woman who had threatened to pull his brain out of his skull and scribble on it, yet excited at the prospect of new knowledge.

They did a test to see how much work was in store for them, the medic promptly brightening up at the hint of techniques he was required to know and would subsequently need to learn.

Naruto discovered with much delight that the medic wasn't half-bad. In fact, he was far more competent than he had previously thought. Granted, Kenji's chakra control was abysmal and his knowledge of working iryo jutsu was at ground zero, but that was to be expected since the use of chakra wouldn't yet be introduced to mainstream healers for a few more decades and the creation of iryo jutsu even later.

Aside from this, Naruto could find no other fault. No work was required of him in the fields of human anatomy, neural and root nerve map, and chemical usage. The man clearly deserved his position as head medic of a major ninja clan.

Finally the list came down to: chakra training, precision training, iryo jutsus of the surveillance and stasis types, chakra scalpel and string, medical-aid fuin jutsu, and the needed surgical procedures.

On the second day of their training, the head medic came in with a horde of students of his own, all eager since they didn't have the threat of lobotomized brain on their heads, and determined to make the most out of '_that weird healer woman'_. They crowded at his door and the patch of hallway outside his window, elbowing each other and scribbling furiously on their notebooks.

By the fourth day, this same horde had dwindled down to about a handful of the most advanced, not student but Kenji's peers, who struggled to keep up. Naruto drove them hard, using a combined tactic of whip and candy on their male egos, their competitiveness and one-upmanship to get the most out of them.

At the end of the week, the Senju brought in a seal master, an old woman who was reputed to learn the art of sealing from her late husband. They cleared the rest of the day, washed him early and laid him out naked for the old woman. When they were done, he requested another seal, one of a mind link and transfer type, a fuin derivation of the Yamanaka's ninpo, between him and his students. The old woman could only be too happy to oblige since this was considered an S-class seal and wouldn't be invented for another ninety years if his memory was correct. The medics were relieved since this would take care of the theoretical part of their training in a matter of minutes. At least, this was until he told them that the user of the Soki-ritsu no Fuin ran a two percent chance of brain hemorrhage and would be out of commission for the next day out of severe headache caused by the strain.

Their training went on as the second day after the sealing proved that none of his students were caught with the two percent of bad luck.

Second week, they cleared out a room several doors away from his, converting it into a small but well equipped infirmary and started bringing in patients. This would both make maximum use of the medic's time since they were still on clan duty, and provide them with '_training dummies_' for hand-on practices. Not wanting any more incidents with the Senju, Naruto monitored them carefully, using his Kage Fudo to guide the medics through complicated steps and to prevent any regrettable accidents from happening.

They progressed slowly but surely, and though there were problems along the way – inane posturing, chauvinistic attitude, petty politics – they were eventually overcome with the aid of electrocution, tentacles - in the name of all the women he loved who all happened to be closet sadists -, and more lobotomized brains.

At the same time with his preparation of the medics, Naruto kept up his surveillance of the Senju. And since the get go, it was clear that he wasn't alone in his watching. The Senjus too were keeping tabs on him, albeit it seemed to be more out of personal choice than on order. This gave him questions as to what exactly had Yoshizawa Senju told his clansmen about the strange woman currently sharing the same basement with them? He doubted the Senju head would divulge the entirety of the truth, keeping faces and all that, but how much of 'the deal' was known to the normal Senju nin and their non-combat forces? Did they see him as a temporary add-on to their clan? A guest? A prisoner? What did those medic apprentices think he was? A strange boon they weren't allowed to know the origin of? An expired but still greatly knowledgeable medic? Did they know what his seal could do? Were they ordered not to touch him?

Whatever the answers to these questions might be, it was unlikely that he'd ever find out. For the first time ever, he was seeing the turning wheels and mechanics of a true ninja clan before the era of the hidden villages in action. Apparently, the architecture of such ancient organizations while stable and generally trust encouraging between clan members also included a big dose of xenophobia. In this case, Naruto found himself as that 'alien xeno', that little wrench in a well-oiled machine, the mole that was needed but not really wanted.

In the beginning, they kept their distance, appearing from afar, sometimes ghosting by his window. The mere fact that he could see some of their faces from his bed told volume of their underestimation of him. _Which could only be good_. The expressions on their faces varied. Some were openly curious – he was probably a novelty to these -, some were guarded, as standoffish as the Hyuuga of his time, and a select few who wore a certain edge of scheming in their eyes that put worry in his mind and more subterfuge seals on the ground of his room.

By the third week, they'd grown much bolder and more lax in their guard. One, a young man, dark eyes, dark hair, and missing half of an ear, stood by his window one morning, watching as he instructed the medics. On another day, another – a light brunette this time – was at his door, '_exchanging pleasantries'_ with the _'training dummy'_ for a whole afternoon.

And more came.

Gradually, he started seeing a pattern in their visits. An increasing encroachment on his '_territory_'. They never directly addressed him nor held eye-contact with him. They only watched from the sidelines, giving whatever reasons to excuse their presence there.

What for? He had thought.

Psychological war? To show who was in control here? Intimidation tactics? Could be. Their actions were openly flaunting the fact that he was alone here, surrounded by droves of them, all of whom were related to each other. Were they trying to wear him down little by little? While the chances for this were slim, he wouldn't put it pass their crafty leader. Though the man wore the face of the pacifistic Hiruzen Sarutobi, his thinking seemed to be more in line with one Danzo Shimura.

On a whim – or perhaps not -, he'd captured one particularly irritating Senju – the gambling-trouble Ichi which turned out to be short for Ichikawa – with some creative and sneaky use of his Kage Fudo, made him strip down to his birthday suit and dance the hootchie-kootchie in the open hallway much to the horror of bystanders.

His version of a 'middle finger back at ya'.

His repercussion came the next day when Hashirama Senju, in his usual visit, asked him in his gentle but firm voice to '_please leave the loin-cloth on next time_' because apparently he '_terrified the servant women'_. He'd laughed long and hard before telling the boy that it wasn't really his fault and that _he_ was terrified too, to which the Senju had replied, not missing a beat and in the same voice, that he didn't think Naruto was the type who could be terrified by that.

Still, he got what he wanted. The Senju gave him some breathing room after this incident. They understood the message behind his action. '_Here is my line. Don't overstep it_.' He'd said. '_Or next time it won't be something silly_.'

On the other hand, though their crowding presence uneased him, they brought with them a great opportunity. He learned much of their clan just by observing them.

First, there seemed to be a class system among the ninja, identified by their armours, their clothes, and the weapons they wore even in the protection of their home. A sort of intra-army social structure. Those of higher ranks wore comparatively more sophisticated armours, sets full of chainmail and cuirass. Their weapons indicated their category: compound bows, slings, and boomerangs for long-range type; Katana, wakizashi and ninjato for close range; Hamagari, hikigane, neko-te, and what looked like pouches of powder – poison? powder grenade?- for specialists. They all acted according to their ranks.

Second, they followed a certain schedule when they weren't out on missions. This same schedule seemed to apply for the whole clan. Those that came in the late morning and early afternoon were usually sweaty, with the telltale beginning of bruises blossoming on their bodies. Taijutsu practice. In contrast, the ones that came in late afternoon wore a variety of signs: caked mud on their sandals, singed sleeves, wet clothes and hair. Ninjutsu study. Weapon practice seemed to be of a personal schedule as indicated by the erratic coming and going of those with fresh cuts and scratches on their hands. All of these pointed to a system much closer to mainstream military than of ninja-style management but he supposed it fit. After all, before the hidden-village system, ninja clans like this were purported to operate as self-armed militias rather than purely ninja faction.

Third, this was a barrack in the truest sense of the word. He'd deduced this from the second point and from the fact that aside from the servants who were mostly middle to old age, he had not seen a woman in the rank of the Senju. They were all men, young to middle age, at the peak of their time. The wives weren't here. The children weren't here. The grandparents, assuming that they were alive, weren't here. This was a wholly militaristic settlement. The true bulk of their population, those that weren't of fighting age or disposition, lived elsewhere.

Fourth, they were afraid of their clan heir.

This was the one point that he couldn't quite grasp and had many times called doubt to his reasoning.

Instances that showed this were rare and not very obvious but every time he witnessed it, a frightening sense of déjà vu tugged at his mind.

The first time was when one of Hashirama's visits had coincided with the leaving medics. In the narrow door frame where the group met the heir, the medics had parted like the red sea around him. It was not out of respect or formality, not with the way their bodies had curled in, shrinking inward and away from the heir, as if he could hurt them by touch alone.

A pass in the hallway with one of his watchers. They were polite, both of them, painfully so. The sort of polite one would expect to see in a meeting between the mediators of two rivalling countries. A cheap veneer of bows, distances and honorific, of –sans and –samas and other nonsense that simultaneously covered and screamed _'this is buuullsh__**it**__'_ at anybody with eyes and the guts to look.

It was puzzling. It was eerily similar to his jinchuriki childhood. There was something very off about this whole circus act and it wasn't just the boy and his father.

Why?

It would make more sense if the Senju were to fear their leader for fear was as good a tool to control as any. But this was a mere boy. Granted he was the designated heir to the clan but from what he'd seen, Hashirama never seemed to take advantage of his princeling status. The Senju heir was polite even to the servants.

Was it his radical ideals? Or the obvious and recurring disagreement between father and son? Some festering family secret deliberately erased from history?

He didn't know, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to know.

He pushed these questions to a corner of his mind, covering them with a metaphorical dust jacket. He couldn't deny that there was a niggling but growing feel of suspension, of suspicion, like sleeping on wet blanket, like something he would hate to know but needed to know nonetheless. Despite this, rationality dictated he hadn't the time to poke his nose where it wasn't wanted...or needed. He had enough on his plate to worry about: getting his body back to working order; securing'insurance' in case Yoshizawa or one of his loyal ANBU predecessors decided to get nasty; scouting the situation of the world he was in; finding allies; fixing his 'female problem' because he sure as hell wasn't going to let his body remained as it was; finding and infiltrating the Uchiha clan; and finally, a date between him, a certain Uchiha, and the biggest Rasenshuriken he could make without going demon.

For this part at least, history had turned out fine. The young heir would grow into a powerful shinobi and a leader to his people. He'd already changed one major event; that of Hashirama's coming into leadership of the Senju clan and the death of Yoshizawa. He had no doubt that this would reduce his advantage of knowing certain things before they happened. So for the time being, he better steered clear of all historical events. What he needed to do right now was focus on the medic's training.

At least, this was what he planned to do until sometimes halfway into the second month.

It was late night.

He knew something was wrong the moment the Senju heir was in the room. No, he knew before that. Two days precisely for that was the time when Hashirama had ceased his visiting.

It took him another minute to realise **what** was wrong.

It was inky dark outside. The torch light was dimmed by the cold, its licks of fire running thin on dry air. The mirror had since stopped reflecting the sun, and there was no moon this night. It was another point to highlight the difference between _now_ and _his time_. Here, the night came early and was all encompassing. In this mountain, separated from civilization and its basic comfort, and this deep underground, there was nothing to combat it but a few torches mounted on the wall.

The young Senju stood by the closed door, shrouded in the shadow, and was silent. His posture said all he did not say.

Naruto didn't bother asking what was wrong, instead, what he said was:

"Come closer."

There was movement in the dark, and the rustling sound of cloth to accompany it. The Senju stayed in the shadow, away from the single globe of lamp light in the room. He replied:

"I smell bad."

"You didn't say that last week. I could have swum in your sweat then." A pause as he considered. "I can't see you. Come into the light."

Still, Hashirama stayed rooted in his place. His brown eyes gleamed in the dark, reflecting the light in pinpricks of red. It was obvious he wasn't going to come...unless Naruto did something...extreme. And that was exactly what he did.

"How many people did you kill today?"

Bingo. The young Senju stiffened, then flinched. His jaws and neck jerked as though he wanted to look away. He shifted on his feet, about to turn and leave.

Naruto knew what was in the boy's head. He'd been through it himself.

Contrary to what the civilians liked to think, first kills, though they carry their own brand of trauma, weren't the earth-shaking events often depicted in their heavily romanticized novels, nor were they the frenzied affair of testosterone, tits, oversized male cocks and power trips as dreamed up by hordes of serialized civilian's dick-lits. In that first moment of birth, the first drop of blood, the first hitch of breath, the first kiss of death, reality had yet to set in. That dead body was just a _mark_, a thing that had ceased to be human the moment its face turned up on the mission scroll. All the killer could feel then, not despair, not guilt, not disgust, not even the onset of a new philosophical world view. All he could feel was just the pump of adrenalins in his ears, the sharply sweet tang of _morte_, the sight of the dead man's last erection, the euphoria of having completed his first real mission, of having become a man, a real shinobi serving his village. In the far distance, a sound, like glass breaking in the next room.

More kills would soon follow and though the thrill was still there, it would eventually dim and become just another routine. Like the hundreds of ninjas before him, the killer settled in line. After all, he was nothing special and there was nothing special about his _marks_ either.

And the Anbu said: "_It's all business, babe_."

It was only until the first death of someone he knew that reality came knocking at his door. The killer looked down at the familiar body, maybe a friend, maybe a woman he'd shared his bed with, maybe more, and he recognized something.

This was the same wound he'd put on his _mark._

Now all of a sudden, his past kills were put to a new perspective. Emotions stirred. Anger, grief, fear, disgust, confusion. He struggled. He raged. He fought. And slowly, the killer _awakened_ to a new awareness.

At first, he was alone in his knowledge, unable to do anything but watch as others slumbered. Then another, hopefully a friend, stirred. And another. And another. And soon he was no longer alone.

Despite this, there was no agreement among the _awakened_. No secret brotherhood. No talk. They kept to themselves, stuck by their machismo image, each finding his own way to cope with the two facets of his life. On one side, the killer, on the other, the civilian.

Life went on. They woke up to the beat of a new morning, drank their coffee, ate their toast, turned in their report, went the usual nine-to-five with the genin kids, booze-and-boobs in bars in their happy hour, threw up in the back alleyways. They learned that being a good killer, or as they said in the folly of their youth 'the baddest motherfucker on earth', didn't give them better lives, didn't make them better people. Superb fighting skill, it turned out, had nothing to do with being happy. After the glory, there were only dust and bones. Life turned its dusty wheel as though nothing happened.

But there were times, as their eyes met over the lid of a new coffin, over the bundles of well-wishing flowers by the hospital bed, over the candle glow of a birthday cake celebrating surviving yet another year, and they'd know that the other knew, that they _all_ knew the same thing, knew what lie beneath that normal exterior they wore to work every day, and that _it_ was best left unsaid.

For all his self-made unpredictability and his insanity, Naruto had never dreamed he would one day saw that look from the face of Hashirama Senju, of all people.

In retrospect, that was downright dumb.

All ninjas killed, including godly ninja of the past. Especially godly ninja of the past. So there should be no surprise except...

_...except you're not supposed to be like this, old man Hokage. This is too pathetic. Fuck this shit! You were supposed to be a living saint. A killer and a saint, wrapped in the same skin, wearing the same face. Two for the price of one. No holds barred. Set price, sir. No bargaining. You take one, you take both..._

...except they had been worshipping a make-believe god. And now, one hundred years into the past, the faithful follower was finding that, apparently, his god bled mortal blood.

But there was no time to ponder on that. The boy was already turning, his hand going for the door. Naruto had to do something.

"Are you going to run away from me...like you did to **every other asshole** who called you monster behind your back?"

That did the job. Hashirama stopped abruptly, his back rigidified as if someone had poured lead over it. He turned slowly.

Unruffled, Naruto held out his hand to the heir, palm upward in a beckoning gesture.

"Come to me." _Stupid boy. Who do you think I am? A weak woman?_ _I'm not afraid of you._

The weight of Hashirama's stare was needles on his skin, on his face, on his outstretched hand. He could feel the emotions burning behind it. Anger, for the first time aimed at Naruto. Shock. Violation. Wariness. A bone deep exhaustion.

Yet he waited, patiently, faithfully. He was stubborn more than he was patient. He could wait until morning if it was needed.

He kept his stare level on the Senju clan heir, keeping a wordless conversation between them.

_...Trust me. If you can go against your father for me then you can trust me..._

The standstill lasted for a few minutes before the first crack appeared. He could almost see the miniscule frown marring the dark contour of the Senju's pinprick gaze shifted from him to the tile floor – where the vines of his Kage Fudo lay dormant – then back up at him again, bringing with it a tinge of puzzled realization.

..._See. I didn't bind you. I could have but I didn't. Now take the step. That's it. Keep looking at me. Don't look at the window you're not gonna jump over there, look at me..._

The crack widened. Then a movement, tiny and unsure but it was there. Like a man walking on drunken legs, the Senju made his first step toward Naruto, dragging one leg before the other, the tip of his sandaled feet peeking into the circle of light. Then he stopped. His gazing face, from the other side of the room, half in the shadow, half in the light, was frightfully young and carved onto it was a visual cacophony of fear, _hope_, doubt, _longing_, disbelief.

Out of sheer experience of having worn that same face himself, Naruto recognized it for what it was. The Senju was waiting, waiting for the first sign of revulsion, of denial of fellow-creature, waiting for that hand to drop. The look was all wrong on his face. It shouldn't even be there at all. But the fact that it was there made Naruto wanted to rage, to spit fire, to go berserker mode, to crawl out of that bed and rip the major asses that had put that look on the boy's face in the first place.

But more important than that was now. This was the moment of new-born trust, fragile in its birthing hour and he better not screw it up. He stayed very still and waited, like the tamer waiting for the wild creature to come to him on its own.

Hesitantly, another step was made, only slightly longer than the first. The Senju glanced at the window again, then at the door, and finally at the seal on the floor, ready to bolt at any moment. Then a third step, a little longer. The fourth step followed right behind as if he didn't want to change his mind, like a man about to bungee-jump with rope instead of elastic lifeline and thought it was too late for second-thoughts. That brought him within arm's length of Naruto.

He reached out, taking the boy's hand in his. The chakra sparked, and all of a sudden the boy was on his knees, gasping.

"Sit down." Naruto instructed him. He kept a tight grip on the boy, steadying him. The hand holding the Senju glowed a pale purple.

'_First timer'_ He thought, staring back at the Hashirama's wide shocked eyes. '_must be pretty overwhelming_.' Especially when it was his Senchakra that was running through the other's system.

"Feels nice, doesn't it?" He asked, taking the young Senju's slackening expression for a yes. "It's used to calm hysteric patients. Feels like you're asleep in a good bed except that you're awake. Your body is resting but your mind is still up and running. Takes a good bit of chakra but it's pretty nifty for post-combat stress."

He lifted the hand he was holding up, studying it under the yellow lamp light. It was rough with calluses upon calluses, peppered with tiny splinters left from his battle. The wrist and forearm was encased in dagger-mounted leather vambrace. Long fingers, almost one-half longer than his. The skin was a deep tan compared to his new pale cream. The smell of grass and burned flesh still clung to it, as fresh as the memory he was sure. With a few deft flicks of his fingers, he undid the vambrace, letting it drop with a mute thud to the floor. The skin revealed was red and tender with welts from being bound for too long. He pressed a thumb over the wrist vein, counting the heart rate. It beat a mild, near-resting 82 bpm and slowing. The Senju was calm and appeared to be unharmed. But just to be extra sure, he laid a hand above the boy's heart, over the brim of his chest plate, and sent in a prober. Hashirama shuddered under his hand. The signal came back clear. Chakra was on the low. Some bruises and cuts but no major wound. No poison. No weird worms either.

All was good. But what was next?

Before he could decide however, the Senju had spoken up for the second time, and the first time on his own accord, since entering the room.

"Why are you doing this?"

Naruto looked at him, or more specifically at the familiar upward tilt of his eye corners. _Just like the granddaughter_. Doing what? Heal him? Help with the post-killing stress? Be the coper? He didn't like the expression on the boy's face. It was one that hinted that this was the first time that something like this happened. And that was all wrong in a place like this. Clan type militias were supposed to foster brotherhood and sharing or it was no different from a band of mercenaries. And since Naruto was never one to beat around the bush, he went head-on with his suspicion.

"That's not the question you want to ask." He declared, knowing full well that this would not be easy. "And I'm not the one you want to ask either. Let me rephrase it for you. Here is what you really want to know. **Why** did you come here, _to me_, instead of to your brothers, your cousins, or even your father when you are so obviously distressed?"

No reply. And by this, he knew he was right in his growing suspicion. He felt like someone had gripped a meaty hand around his neck. This couldn't be what he thought it was. Please let it not be...

"Why did you come?"

No reply

"You didn't want me to see you. What were you hiding?"

No reply

" ...did you think I'd take pity on you? Are you in the habit of flaunting your vulnerability? Did you think that'd get you attention?"

The Senju was stoically silent.

Once again, Naruto felt that red thread stretching in his mind. A spark sizzled hotly somewhere in his belly. This felt a bit like talking to a wall...or Sasuke in his brooding mode. He closed his eyes so that he didn't have to see the boy's face shivered with micro flashes of emotion, all of them negative, all of them ugly.

"That's what you are to them, isn't it? Not a fellow human or clan member but a war hound with the handy blood-limit no one else has. You hate them but you can't leave them. They are all you know."

The boy's hand grew cold in his. His own other hand rose and fell on his softly quivering belly.

"That's why you keep coming to me isn't it? Because I don't know what you are or what you can do. You think you can make me fall in love with your goody two-shoe boy next door act. Would that make you feel less like a monster?" A second pause as he considered before asking. "How many people before me?"

Again, the boy offered no answer, but his silence alone was telling testament of his guilt.

"So...this is Hashirama Senju." Naruto muttered, feeling something bitter burned in his stomach. "You're not who I thought you to be."

He felt the boy made to stand up, to leave. He tightened his hold.

"Sit down." His voice was soft but there was an undeniable weight to it. His Hokage voice. No one walked away from Naruto Uzumaki, not even the Shodaime.

"I'm thinking." And he was. He scoured the maelstrom of thoughts in his head, seeking comprehension in the violent chaos. He did not know what to think or how to feel about this new revelation.

That Hashirama Senju, the reputedly gentle, compassionate, and wise Hokage, was a fraud.

After the months of isolation in a constantly hostile environment, months of being imprisoned in a body that was weak and was not his, months unable to tend to his emotional injury before his failed last battle, he was exhausted.

His heart was all but numb.

But this. This was on a level all of its own.

Patiently, he filtered his squabbling thoughts, one by one. An image came to his mind.

The statues of the Valley of the End.

Before these two giants of stone and legend, he had felt as small and insignificant as the moss that grew on their stone toes. He was sixteen then, freshly crowned Hokage, and secretly afraid of what lied ahead.

Looking up at the harsh planes of Shodaime's face, he had thought: '_This old guy built the whole world._' And later on when he was a little less sober. '_He created me!_' Which might not be entirely wrong because after all, what was Naruto Uzumaki but a mishmash of ninja, Biju, _KonohaKonohaKonoha_, gut and stubbornness, and the Will of Fire ideal? Nearly all of these were either spawns of or greatly influenced by the First Hokage.

Now, to have his suspicion confirmed, and in such a fashion. That peace might not have been the first reason for the creation of Konoha and the exalted Will of Fire might have been a little closer to political propaganda than it should have been.

"What are you thinking?" Asked the boy, unknowingly reminding Naruto that he was still there, this smaller version of the Shodaime.

_Rawer too, and more real than both his statues and his text book pictures._

"I'm thinking...that you must have bitten me when I wasn't looking...or...I don't know... maybe it was I who bit you. I'm feeling pretty crazy right now." And gave you the pretentious-attention-deficit-boy syndrome. Damn it. What would Tsunade think? "Who knows? You and I. We seem to have the same disease." He replied automatically, somewhat surprised by the honesty of his own words.

It was impossible not to notice the similar stocks the majority of Hokages had come from: orphan, growing up alone and amidst war time, traumatic childhood, neglect, possessing great power at absurdly young ages, love their subjects to the point of suicidal. When viewed under a psychoanalysis scope, such love was diagnosed as the product of their inability to deal with inner inadequacies and deemed self-destructive.

To Naruto, the understanding was on much simpler terms. When one was born with nothing, one learned to love everything in the hope that one day, this love would be reciprocated.

The exceptions to these, of course, were the two first Hokages, Shodaime and Nidaime, one of which was sitting at the foot his bed and he was nothing like his successors.

This boy wasn't an orphan. He didn't grow up alone, neglected and discriminated. He had a family. He had a brother who loved him and succeeded his legacy. According to history text, in a few years, not long, he'd have a wife, and in another few years, his own children who adored him.

Even before falling to this time and meeting him in person, Naruto had had doubts. Even with years into the alliance with the other villages, staying in their houses, eating their food, fighting alongside them, he still held a special place in his heart for his village alone.

There was no faulting a man for loving his family above all even when that family was full of psychos, freaks, and killers.

The Shodaime, on the other hand, was known for seeing all Konoha citizens, many of whom used to be his enemies and the murderers of his kin, as his own family. On the surface, this sounded generous and righteous, but when one started to question further...

What sort of man was capable of loving complete strangers on equal level with his family? With his wife, brother, and children? If such love was true, then what did that say about the family? What did that say about the man himself?

His eyelids fluttered open then winced at the suddenly overpowering light. He blinked once, turned his head and saw the boy. For a moment he couldn't link the two images in his head: this boy, young and confused, waiting patiently by his bed like a prisoner waiting for the judge's verdict, and the demigod Konoha had worshipped for some ninety years.

Just what sort of person was Hashirama Senju? And just what the hell was Naruto going to do with him?

...on second thought, did it matter? Was he going to go all the way a hundred years into the past, forsaking his world, himself, paying the fare in blood, sweat, and loss, just to falter here? Because of a little doubt? Because he had been expecting a god but had received a mortal instead? Because of the tiny possibility that Konoha might have been the rich fruit of a cancerous tree? Did any of those questions and suspicions bouncing in his head really matter?

Fuck no!

So what if Hashirama Senju wasn't the pristine saint he was supposed to be? Who could claim to be pure in the world of ninja? No one. That was who. So what if his Will of Fire wasn't the idealistic one-for-all and all-for-one philosophy it was touted to be but the mere product of an alienated and neglected childhood, just like three out of the remaining five Hokages? The one thing that mattered was that that boy had believed in it, had made it true and had laid his life down to protect it. He had died not knowing whether his dream and his village were safe but he had died believing nonetheless. And out of that crazy child's dream had come the first and the strongest ninja village. So who was Naruto to nitpick which tree it had come from and from whence had that tree grown?

With these thoughts in his head, a new emotion flooded him.

_Shame_

How could he, for one moment, reacted so childishly? He understood the mechanics behind his own emotions. He had seen his pitiful past and his failures in the boy and he had become angry and disgusted at the reminder. An emotional knee-jerk reaction of sorts. However, knowing it didn't lessen the damage. He could do better than this.

"Hey" He called out to the boy, paused for a moment not knowing what to say. Then it came to him. "...wanna know my name?"

A rush of excitement filled him. He realized that he hadn't told another soul his name for some years now. Those that needed to know already knew, and those that didn't know probably did not need to. He felt the words beating from his belly up his heart, up his throat, in his mouth, pushing.

"My name..."

Suddenly, he was no longer the world-weary, paranoia-ridden soldier but a young boy. For a brief moment, he was sixteen again, not twenty-six and feeling like a hundred, and he was yelling his name out loud to the world (_Naruto Uzumaki) (Naruto Uzumaki!) (And I'm gonna be the greatest Hokage ever! Believe it!_) and not skulking in caves, hiding himself like a leper hid his boils. Young, and fragile, and stupid, but also full of possibilities.

"My name...is Naruto." The boy's eyes widened. "Don't forget it."

No surname. Even in the stirs of his emotional re-Baptism he remembered caution. He had no idea if his mother's clan existed in this time and he'd rather not find out the hard way.

The boy's face shivered with flashes of emotions. He could guess what was going through his mind. Names meant honesty. Names meant vulnerability. Names meant connection and acceptance.

Names meant acknowledgement...

To be accepted for who you were even if you were a freak of nature or a bearer of demons.

It was far harder to kill once you knew their name and who they were. They had become human, not another walking corpse waiting for its face to turn up on a mission scroll.

He watched the young Senju leaning back on his crossed legs as if to gain perspective. When he responded, his respond was nothing like Naruto imagined.

"On the mountain, the first time I took you out...why didn't you kill me?"

There was a split second when panic overrode him. _He knew!_ Then control kicked in and he was calm again. The Senju was a ninja through and through, even in his moment of vulnerability. He imagined every ninja...no...every person of this turbulent time must accede to this code of caution in order to survive. He took his time answering, drawing his voice out, showing the boy he was neither alarmed that he knew nor ashamed of what he could have done...of what he **didn't** do.

"If you really were going sneak me out, then what would you do once your father asked to see my body?" He fixed the boy with a gaze. He knew full well what the only two options for this scenario were. The Senju was either lying to him or he would have to acquire a female corpse as substitute. A fresh corpse.

There were a few heartbeats of silence when both knew they were at an impasse, when both saw what the other was: ninja, killer, and _human_, and that neither of them was giving in. The boy looked down at his lap, pursed his lips, then looked back up at Naruto again. His wood brown eyes reflected the light in pinpricks of red.

"You confuse me." He said finally.

'Well...you ain't the first one to say so, kid.' Thought Naruto.

* * *

He could no longer sleep at night that last month.

For the last two weeks alone, it seemed as if all of his stress, all of his pressure, and all of his worries were compounded into a thick paste of sweat, fear, frustration, and anxiety and they hung about him like a shroud.

He no longer asked to be taken out to the forest or to the mountain. Everywhere they took him, the Senjus were there, like a throng of black-clad human trees, staring at him with gleaming dark eyes that told nothing of what was in their mind. The fact that he often had to go blind and completely defenceless in front of them was just extra icing. In the dark of his blindness, somehow, he could still feel their gazes on his face, on the back of his neck, on his immobilized body.

Even in the sanctuary of his room, he was still rudely invaded. He had gone to sleep one night, exhausted from a long session with the medics, only to be woken up by a sudden spike of nervousness. In the shadow of his ceiling, the white clay face hung like a spider. The pair of eyes behind it stared at him unabashedly.

Long after the pre-ANBU had gone; he was still wide awake, groping blindly at his bunched sheets with his two fisted hands. _How long?_ How long had he been watching him?

He hadn't yet slept a night since. Coupled with that, he hadn't eaten nor drunk anything but plain water for at least a month now. He had discovered very early on that this new body, though far more enduring than normal human standard, still required regular human sustenance, yet he didn't dare touch the food given to him. To every grumbles his stomach made, his exhausted mind answered with groans of its own. What if they put something in his food? He wasn't immune to all poisons and anaesthetics, and even the best immunity can be bypassed with a little creativity and the required knowledge, all of which the Senju medics possessed, one more than others. What would he do if they managed to drug him out cold and throw him out to god knew where? He could try dragging himself on his bare hands, but even then the closest town was hundreds of miles away, even in his time; hundreds of miles, separated by forests and mountains and rivers, clearly not a distance that can be crossed on two hands and a broken body.

So, with these thoughts in his head, he resigned to turning a deaf ear on the grouses of his stomach cannibalizing itself out, being regenerated, then cannibalizing itself again.

His room smelled of him now that he had stayed in for so long. It was as if he had rolled his body, naked and sweaty and covered with brewer's yeast, all over the floor, the wall, and the ceiling, and left behind an olfactory ghost of himself. His now female scent, familiar and alien all at once, put him in a constant state of unease. It felt as though he wasn't alone in his room but that there was another one lying beside him, lying _inside_ him, breathing as he did.

Because he no longer slept, the days lengthened, then blurred altogether into an infinite and indistinguishable flipping of light and dark, and dark and light, and dry cool air and screens of dust flying in the reflected sun and the leeching current of his slowly but surely diminishing strength. He marked each of these changing with a swipe to the wall, crossing it with another when today bled into tomorrow, so that he wouldn't lose track of the rapidly fading timeline. Based on the number of crosses carved on to the wall, he still had a long way to go.

His room became his glass prison. On the outside, the world, full of light, sound, and color. Inside, him, caged and stripped bare like a zoo animal. There were times when it was all he could do not to crawl off the bed, press himself to the glass wall, and suck in all that muted noises from the outside: the fluttering of a hundred whispers in gossip; the slapping of feet on wet stone as the servants scurried by, head held low so that they didn't look him the eye; the hymn of a hundred male voices grunting, shouting, laughing, talking, _living_; the tantalizing scent of wind, and grass, and changing seasons, and red ripe apples, and rushing rivers that somehow, miraculously, managed to penetrate the thick earth upstairs to float all the way down here. It was as though he had become a black hole of life itself, locked in constant hunger for the living. Yet, there were also times when he, rolled up into a flesh ball with his blanket coiling tight over him, wanted nothing more than for them, _the whole world_, to just shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of his face and leave him to rot in peace.

Despite this slow entombment within his room, he clung to it desperately. He built defences around it like he would a fortress. He laid chameleon seals in the beams, in the cracks between cinder blocks, under the window ledge. He wove traps over the door and under his bed. He sent creeper seals out the hallway. They would tell him if someone passed them by. He would draw seals on his clothing too if they didn't take them away so frequently. Within a few changing of light and dark, his room had become a nest of seals upon seals, all invisible except for the obvious Kage Fudo.

None of them managed to slow his descent.

Since the beginning, he had little delusion of his true situation within the Senju clan, which was as precarious as a rock perched half way out of the brim of a mountainous cliff. He had started out strong and confident but as time passed and his mind and body steadily deteriorated, he could no longer stop the onslaught of paranoia and doubts from wrecking his mind.

What if Yoshizawa had figured out his lie? He'd thought. What if there was a sensor in the ranks of the Senju and he had detected the absence of the promised slow-ticking bomb inside his screwed up chakra? Better yet, what if his son had told him? What if he had decided that he had had enough of this deal? His entire ransom against the Senju was hinged on this one lie that he was a danger to them if he either died or was left unassisted. He had won the last round against their clan head on nothing but sheer guts and an utter refusal to flip over on his belly and die; but for all his bravado, he knew he would lose what little control he had if even the smallest smudge of doubt managed to get into Yoshizawa's mind.

His only chance then was to endure until the operation, whether a success or a failure, freed him from his self-made imprisonment. Once his body was back to working order, he'd have nothing to fear. But even as he repeated this assurance over and over to his feverish mind, he knew he was at his limit. And all the while, the medics watched him. The servant watched him. The Senju ninjas watched him. And he, in turn, drove all his frustration onto the medics, forcing them to learn faster, harder, better.

It was in these conditions that the Senju heir, whom he hadn't seen hide nor hair of for several 'crosses' since their night talk, came back.

The boy came quietly through the door, closed it. He said nothing, no greeting, no 'how have you been?', instead he headed for the table, pulled it next to the bed, then produced a tin can and a spoon from his coat sleeve. He laid the tin and the spoon on the table, pulled the chair close, sat down facing Naruto. He pried open the lid, picked up the spoon, and, very slowly and deliberately, dipped it into the porridge inside, lifted the content up to his mouth, swallowed without chewing.

He pushed the tin can towards Naruto.

.

.

.

The porridge fought a hard passage down his gullet. His shrunken stomach clenched around the new entrants, then bulged painfully. He had eaten too fast, having pounced on the can the moment his drowsy brain realized what the boy was doing. He slowed down, coughed, then picked up the speed again.

He finished the porridge far too fast for his liking. He licked the can and the spoon until he was sure there was not a drop of soup left, until even the last salty porky hint was lapped up and there was only the taste of metal on his tongue.

Then he licked his fingers.

He didn't give a damn that he was doing all this in front of the heir of the Senju clan, in front of the future Shodaime. That well-fed princeling wasn't the one who had to experience his own stomach eating itself out of hunger.

He stopped when his fingers finally pruned from all the licking and sucking, then sprawled himself onto the bed. His stomach groaned. The porridge inside warmed his whole body. He curled himself around his protesting belly, moaning a little at the sensation. He had never ever felt such painful sense of satisfaction.

Then he remembered that he wasn't alone.

He turned his face up only to see Hashirama looking out the window, waiting for something. A servant passed by, paused in front of the window, nodded once. Hashirama nodded back. The servant left. The Senju heir turned back to Naruto, then he uttered one word.

"Sleep."

He blinked once before rubbing his face into his heap of wool blanket. This boy was a Senju but out of them all, he seemed to be the only one who lived by his own code of honour and honesty. Not very ninja-like, that. He gave half of a thought to protesting but his eye balls felt like they had sunk into their sockets and his whole body ached from disuse. He snuggled deeper into the blanket, peeking at the boy with one sleepy eye. From this vantage point, Hashirama sat like a wall, blocking out everything, the dour grey room, the hallway, the light, all the nosy Senjus and their bastard of a leader, even his own heady woman scent. He closed that eye too, then muttered through the blanket.

"...must be hard being your father. What a naughty son he has..."

Then he floated upward into the peaceful dark.

.

.

.

The noises of argument stirred him from his sleep. He lay still, teetering between consciousness and unconsciousness.

...can't keep doing this...your father...,said a voice in hushed agitation.

He groaned and moved in his blanket. His eyelids fluttered.

The voice stopped. Footsteps. Then something big and warm lay across his eyes and forehead.

...keep sleeping. There's a little time yet...,it said.

He leaned into the thing. What was it saying? He couldn't make head or tail out of the noises, but it was so so soothing and he was so so tired. The waking world was too painful. He'd like to sleep a bit more. He buried himself deeper into the dark.

...you're done for..., said the voice, sighing.

* * *

His body jerked as he saw the smile stretching wide on Kenji's face.

"Success!" The medic crowed. His eyebrows shot up under folds of wrinkles and sweat. His fellow medics buzzed excitedly. The news travelled fast and within an hour there were words back to him that everything would be ready by tomorrow morning.

He laid a hand on his belly, feeling the quivers it made.

He ate his 'secret fourth meal' brought to him by the Senju heir, didn't even finish half of it. He thanked the boy, then told him to leave because he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep even with his guarding.

He spent the night in silence, making maps of his ceiling.

The sun rose in rays of reflected light, casting long shadows over the servants in front of his door. They came in, did the usual ritual, cleaned him in the washroom, clothed him not in yukata but in a clean samue work shirt and pants, then they took him out. An accompanying Senju ninja performed the obligatory blinding genjutsu on him.

The servant walked briskly. He was almost running. Naruto bounced lightly in his hold. His heart beat to the rhythm.

When they finally lifted the genjutsu off him he saw that he was in a domed room, airy and holed in with dozens of windows as tall as men, and that he could see the trees and the skies outside. The seals on the floor were medical. The seals on the wall, on the other hand, were a part of even greater containment seals.

He spotted the Senju head standing by a window.

"That's good insurance. That's pretty slick you know. I can't say you don't know your tricks." He said to the man, defiant to the last moment.

He could see the logic in what they were doing. Putting him in an operation room detached from their main compound so that even in the case of failure, he wouldn't bring the whole mountain down on their heads. The containment seals were an extra measure so that any explosion that happened would only be within the contained perimeter. These were high level seals, extremely chakra-demanding. He had no doubt there were dozens of Senjus outside, each maintaining their post as batteries for the seal array.

Yoshizawa answered him with a grunt, then turned away to direct his men.

He looked through the windows at the crowd milling outside. As expected, the human batteries stood within rings of seals, their faces taut with concentration. Some were already sitting down on the cobblestone floor. They weren't the only ones there. It looked as though half of the Senjus in the compound had concentrated here for today. For the first time ever, he spotted women and children among them. They wore formal clothing and gathered in small groups of four to six, the women's faces heavy with white powder, their hair done up in elaborate coiffures.

Kenji was by the door and standing in front of him were a thirty-something woman in a deep blue formal Homongi kimono and three young children. The woman kept her head down. One child reached out to hold the medic's hand, incomprehension shining in his wide brown eyes. The woman looked up momentarily, saw him through the door. Her eyes widened. She whipped her face down again, biting her sleeve as one big sob shook her whole body. Her red lip paint smeared the blue silk of the kimono.

Naruto was suddenly hit by the impact that he must have made on these people's lives. These were the families of the medics and the seal-keepers that would partake his operation, here to say goodbye.

He breathed in, breathed out, calmed his nerves. This was what he had to do or even more people would die.

He looked for Hashirama in the crowd but couldn't find him. Pity. He had wanted to thank the boy again. He really did owe him his life.

When the teary send-off finally ended, the spectator Senjus pulled the medic and the seal-keeper's families away. Yoshizawa exited the room, exchanging a nod with the incoming medics.

Among the group that he had taught, only Kenji and three others were here. The rest were young assistants and medic trainees. The Senju had decided to keep their reserve. Though it was undoubtedly a good choice, he wondered how that talk, where they decided who would go and who would be kept, had gone through and how the families had reacted. It couldn't have been pretty.

An assistant carried him to the gurney in a nexus of seals and laid him on his stomach on it. The seals on the floor hummed softly. The seals on the wall trilled. He felt fingers on his back, drawing the strings of his Samue suit shirt, then his back was bare and cold in the morning air. Kenji stood by his head, sighed, then drew himself to his full height. He looked Naruto in the eyes and said:

"It has not been a pleasant time for me but...you were a good master."

Naruto blinked, genuinely surprised. It seemed, faced with death, the medic had decided to throw away all the petty scrambles of life.

Before he could reply, they threw a blue holed cloth over him so that only his lower back and the beginning of his buttock curve were exposed.

"Anesthetic" Someone called.

His head was suddenly encased in a balloon of pale blue chakra. He felt his body slackened.

An irrational fear hit him then. Get off the gurney, it said. Crawl. _Run_.

He realized that he had a very real chance of dying here. If he died here, he would unleash the monstrous youki sealed in him into an unsuspecting world, but more important than that, he was afraid. It shamed him to admit it but...

...He didn't want to die.

This wasn't the same with Madara and the suicidal jutsu. He had nothing left then, no friends, no country, nothing. Now, when he had finally found a reason to want to live...He wanted to see his friends so much. Even if he had to wait for a long time only to see their baby selves; even if he would be old and wrinkly by the time they can comprehend just what he had done for them; even then...

..._I want to live...I want to live...I want to live_...

The mantra looped itself in his head.

He struggled for a few seconds before his body gave under the influence of the seals.

Then the dark took him.

* * *

"It's a failure?"

"A strange woman interfered. The Senju head lives. That is as far as we got. Rat won't tell us anymore."

"Hah." The man on the lounge twisted his whiskery moustache with one meaty hand. "You hear that?"

The boy sitting at the feet of the lounge was a midget compared to this mountain of a man. He nodded at the man's question. His curly hair shook with the motion of his head.

"It's no good. Now what are you waiting for?"

The boy rose slowly, keeping his body demure in its every gesture. He clutched his pet to his chest, a bunny with fur as white as his hair and eyes as pink as his, and then he walked out of the room.

The servant waited until he could no longer hear the boy's footstep through the thick wood door, then he stood up, bringing his hand to his sword hilt.

"No,no. Don't kill him yet. That's such a waste of young meat."

The man shifted his body again. His head bobbed on the vast expanse of his shoulders.

"His plan would have succeeded if it weren't for the unknown woman. He's a danger to you and your line."

"Hah! When has anyone's plan ever gone accordingly? He's a child still. He plans as a child does, without any consideration to things beyond his vision." The man patted his thigh. "Let him live for a little while. People will look at him and think he's my heir. He'll be the perfect decoy they want while I groom my real heir somewhere else."

The servant nodded.

"Besides, I still have some use for those Senju mongrels. Let them keep the Uchiha upstarts at bay. If I'm too soft with them, they'll start thinking themselves the kings of peasants. Hah! That's how you deal with dogs, Tora. That's how you deal with them. You keep their bitches on one side and you waggle your bone in their faces. They'll pant whichever way you want them to."

He leaned to one side of the lounge, reached out with his hand and lifted a smoke pipe from the side table. He brought the pipe to his lips, drew in one long inhale, puffed out a cloud of smoke. The servant tilted to one side to dodge the incoming white cloud.

"Now, Tora...hmm…what was I talking about? You know that my mistress wants to name her cat after you? Thought you're a terribly handy man. Hah! Tora! What a name for a cat. What a bunch of harpies..." The man prattled on, buoyant on the high of opium. Tora simply stood and nodded periodically to his lord's now mindless prattling.

Outside of the room, unseen and unheard by them both, the boy sat with his back against the wall. The marble floor was cold under his bare feet. Up ahead, his bunny hopped along the empty hallway. The child shoes it wore on its hind legs made it slip one paw after the other.

* * *

"….."

"Blood stasis seal?"

"All good."

"Opening section B. Focus! Focus" The head medic barked at the paling assistants.

"Heart rate?"

"He…heart rate stable…urgh!"

"If you're going to puke, do it outside."

"I…I'm good."

"Section B opened."

"I can't believe it. We can see it now."

"Just keep your scalpel in the clear. Don't touch those ligaments."

"Give me a good B. P . We're going in now."

"She's one-oh-five over sixty-eight. Steady as a rock."

…

…

..

"Woa…"

"This is…"

"Wruuarghhh…"

"Shit! He puked. Get him out! Get him out of the array!"

Someone screamed, the sound shrill and shocking in the room.

"Someone shut that bastard up. He's messing with my sig. What's the reader? What are you waiting for? Give me a read! I need a read! Now! Yoshinobu?"

"That…that doesn't show up on the monitor seal."

"What is it?"

"It…it's breathing!"

" ...She's not human!"

"Shut your yapping! She's got an unknown kekkai genkai. We may find anything inside her."

"Get me a clamp. We're taking it out."

"That...that should just..."

"Wait. What are you doing? ...No! Don't touch it!"

* * *

He woke up in a puddle as big as a lake, drowsy, in pain, and possessed absolutely no clue as to where he was.

It was definitely not anywhere near the Senju compound though.

He had been lying face down in the '_lake-puddle'_. The water was in his mouth, his nose, his ears. He coughed them out, sat up on his legs, then wiped his face with his hands. He was wet, cold, and tired.

Where was he?

He looked up. There was nothing but water and open skies, but there was a lot of water, water running all the way to meet up with the red copper skies in the horizon, water clear and flat like a mirror made of liquid, like someone had shallowed out the ocean and this was all that was left, a little sea of water no higher than his waist even when he was sitting.

There was also something else. A hole, abyssal in size, fathomlessly dark and foreboding in depth. And instead of sitting on the ground like any normal gulf of earth should, this one sat in the air itself.

The skies above it swirled in violent strips of red and white cloud before descending into its mouth. It swallowed the running water in one unending gulp. And now that he noticed it, even the gurgling sound of running streams seemed muted around it.

He sat still for a few heart beats, filled with a sense of unease. It was as though he was sitting inside a bottle made of skies, cloud, and water and that hole was the only exit.

Was this a dream? Was he dreaming? He'd like to believe he was but the cold bite of water on his skin seemed too real and the space too vast for such fantasy.

He leaned on one arm and was about to stand up when the world tilted suddenly. He slipped on his arms, yelling in surprise. The water coiled and swirled violently around his legs, sweeping him toward the awaiting abyss.

A sudden fear spiked through him. Whatever that thing was, he did not want to go anywhere near it. He gripped his fingers into the slippery ground below, slipped again.

If this was a dream then it was far too real for his liking.

He thrashed his legs in the water, pinched his fingers deeper into the ground and barely managed to slow down.

The abyss was silent, looking at him through the water.

Then it sighed.

And the sigh was a slow, undulating, and breathy sound that emitted from within its dark depth and floated to him like a lover's caress, like a promise full of feathers in the dark and black hands on his eyes and wet touches on his face. And it was all he could do not to let the fear eat him from inside out.

"She's awake." A hand was holding his face up. Another hand pulled up his eyelid. Yellow light exploded into his vision.

A wet fuzzy cloth was brought to his nose. The smell of piss seared straight into his brain and jerked him fully awake in a split second.

He shot out his hands; one gripped the wrist, one seized the vulnerable throat above him. He heard yells of surprise and someone screaming "Don't move! Don't move!". Ignoring the order, he pinched the throat veins, then jerked up his knee into the soft stomach, heard a grunt and complimenting gasps. He dragged the pliant body over him.

Only then, with the whimpering meat-shield covering him from possible attacks, did he have the leisure to slow down and figured out what was going on. He blinked his eyes a few times to adjust to the light. The first thing he saw was the pale face of the medic apprentice whose throat he was clutching.

"...please...please let me go. I swear I won't hurt you." The kid whimpered, already near to tear.

He swept his eyes pass the boy's gangly frame, over the room, taking in the bunch of medics huddling in one corner. One of them stepped up, holding his hands palms out in surrender, the head medic Kenji.

"Call back your chakra." He said, sounding and looking far calmer than his shaking peers.

"You succeeded."

"I failed. Call back your chakra. And please, that boy is going to die if you don't release him soon."

He hesitated for a moment before loosening his hold on the apprentice. The boy dropped to the floor in a sobbing heap. The medic pulled the boy up from the floor, patted him, and then sent him to the door.

"Go tell the clan head we're ready."

Naruto waited till the apprentice was gone before fixing the medic with a look.

"Explain." He ordered.

"We failed. The stasis seal keeper fainted in the middle. We couldn't do anything with all that blood." He pointed to a vat below the gurney. "That's all yours."

Naruto startled at the sight of the bath-tub size vat filled with red liquid. He should have been dead if he lost that much.

"We found this embedded in your spinal cord. The moment we got them out, you started healing on your own."

There were several heartbeats when Naruto stared at the contents of the Petri-dish presented to him, unsure of what to do.

"Have any idea what it is?" The medic asked.

"No." Yes, but he didn't need the inevitable drama if the Senju were to know what those little blue glinting shards inside that glass dish were.

The remains of Shodaime's necklace...made from his chakra.

He watched as they slowly disintegrated into the air, their strength depleted. Was this why his youki-based regeneration hadn't worked as it was supposed to? He had used the necklace pieces as a one-time anchor point in suppressing the roaming Bijus, clearing the path for him towards Madara. More than that, was this why he was so conveniently dropped into Hashirama Senju's garden, which was probably the only place that could give him a chance of survival? Was this also a part of the Great Toad Sage's scheme?

He gave these speculations a few seconds of thoughts before pushing them aside. Speculations were fine but this not the time for them. This whole thing was not yet over. He pushed the dish away and sat up on the gurney.

"That's all very interesting, but more importantly, what's with the seal?" He gestured at the chakra-drenched and humming walls. It felt as though they were trying to push him in.

"We've been trapped here for three days. When your chakra went haywire we thought you were going to..."

"...explode?" So there were sensors among the Senjus. He had no idea how deep they can read, or even if his screwed up chakra system could be read at all but apparently they had interpreted the youki released from his massive regeneration as a danger signal and had sealed him in along with the medics. He eyed Kenji and the Senju medic's haggard faces. They had been waiting for their death sentence to fall for three days and three nights. They probably didn't dare sleep and had little to eat.

The tiny vindictive part of him scoffed at the medic's plight - Good. Now these bastards knew how he'd been feeling for the past month – but he wasn't one to hold grudges.

"Cheer up. You're still alive." He told the medics as he looked out of the door.

The seal on the wall whined a high note before dying down. Sounds from outside started floating in. He heard men's yelling, the whining and wailing of women. Were the wives waiting outside? Footsteps, a whole herd of them.

He sat up straighter, dangled his feet from the gurney edge, and waited for the cue. He'd rather jump right off and started testing his body but that would probably push at the already skittish Senjus outside. Now that he was healed, it would be far harder for them to do any harm, but once all was said and done, this was still the cradle of the future Konoha. Naruto obviously couldn't do anything to them. The possibility of both a good and a bad reaction stirred both eagerness and anxiety in him. He didn't have the slightest idea what the Senju head had in store for him. Would he uphold their deal or did he already change his mind?

The ruckus took a while to die down, and when it did, the Senju head himself came in through the door, flanked by his usual entourage of white masks. He eyed the medics, then Naruto, his face unreadable. Now no longer distracted with his operation, Naruto could see that he had recovered from the poison worm incident. His face had lost that skeletal look, and his body filled out the armour appropriately. He looked more like the third Hokage now than ever, and the resemblance unnerved Naruto.

Yoshizawa let the lower tier medics and the apprentices leave, keeping only Kenji and another behind. Then he turned to his unwelcomed house guest.

"Well? Let us see the result then."

Naruto made no reply. He stared at his feet for about a second, then, very slowly and carefully, he slid off the edge of the gurney. He felt the cold touch of the stone floor under his soles first – he really was healed! – then a shocking pain when his face met the hard floor with a loud '_thwappt!_'

If anybody laughed then he didn't notice. He glared at his sprawling legs over his shoulders. It was all for naught! It had been too long. His muscles had atrophied, and the rehabilitation would take months. Months that he had neither the patience nor the tolerance for.

He glanced at Yoshizawa, saw the man looking back at him still with the blank expression, then he concentrated on his legs. He tugged at the nature chakra inside him first, a miniscule amount compared to his bottomless reservoir but it was enough to safeguard him for now.

Then he opened his youki.

One white mask tensed but the Senju head gave no order.

Youki surged through him like a thorn river, wrapping itself around his legs. His legs burned. The muscle cells inside started cannibalizing themselves to make place for newer cells. The pain white washed his vision. He bit his lips and didn't make a sound. He'd be damned if he appeared weak in front of these chauvinistic pigs.

"Move! God damn you move!" He heard himself saying. His body moved on its own, curling, coiling, and heaving with effort. More pain. Pain that blinded him, that made his ears bleed and spread his mouth in a rush of inhale-exhale and an almost keening moan. Pain that made him want to drop down and give up but..._God damn it damn it damn it all_...He can't stop until he saw Madara Uchiha on the floor with a Rasengan hole in his chest...

...And all of a sudden he was standing up against the gurney, blinking and breathing in and out in heavy wet pant. He saw the Senjus in a circle around him; saw their full attention on him. He smirked at them.

_You see that, motherfuckers, you see that?_

There, under the watchful eyes of the Senjus, he took his first step. Pain blossomed in little white flowers in his vision but he pushed on. Second step now. His body bobbed and leaned from the gurney, his hands still fastened on its edge for support. _Don't fall. Don't fall_. He stopped momentarily, sucked in one big breath, then let go of the gurney rail.

The world wavered for about a second or so, before righting itself. His thighs and shins trembled minute convulses under the strain of his body. Third step. Some of the white-masks in front of him backed off. Somehow, they had lost their giant frames, like they had shrunk in height and mass both right in front of his eyes. The dome room too seemed to have shrunk to midget size in a matter of minutes, and it was now suddenly too small for him.

He looked past them to the shining door.

He checked back at Yoshizawa, saw his cold fish face once again.

Oh...what the hell. If they wanted to stop him they should have done so earlier.

He staggered – _slow and easy, old boy, slow and easy_ – one step at a time towards the door. The light shining through it crooned a beckoning hymn only he could hear. No one interrupted him. No hand grabbed at his arms to pull him back.

He passed the arched frame on step number fourteen –

- and suddenly the world exploded in a brilliant show of colours and sound right before his eyes. He stood stock-still for a while, just leaning on the door frame and looking up at the open blue skies, so vast, so high, with absolutely no end he could see.

Ignoring his protesting legs, he dipped his knees and with one bound he was high up in the air. He was so caught up with the indescribable rush of the jump that he nearly missed the tree top he was aiming for. The crowd below hissed their gasps, shouts, and whispers. Their faces a blur of colours and beady black eyes.

The tree top offered him a view both high and wide. It was fresh morning like it was three days ago when they carried him into that brick and mortar tomb, and the sun was just starting its climb up the misty blue horizon. The air was sweetly fresh and only when he had sucked in a lungful of it did he realized just how foul the vapoury congeal of his room was. The forest had long since changed into its fall coat, a leafy sea of auburn, honey brown, and burgundy and it whispered its crisp '_hello'_ to him.

_...you're alive...and you're back home..._

_...welcome back..._

"...yeah, I'm still kicking, ain't I?"

He paused, expecting somebody to voice their objections out loud, but no one did. The motley crowd down there hadn't quite caught his murmur and the only bastard who...A bark of laughter tore through him so sudden it surprised even him. Ferocious joy sparked like a bullet in his belly and ricocheted inside him until he was so full of it he had to laugh.

"Did ya hear that? I'm alive! I'm fucking kicking it, and it's fucking fantastic!" He waved his hands in the air as if to demonstrate. "In yo face, Madara! Who's whose bitch now, huh? I totally owned you! Owned you and your wheelie weasel face! Ya hear me?"

He roared with laughter, spinning on the tree top, kicking his hands and feet wildly. He howled and yowled. He was mad with joy. He felt like he was going to float all the way up to heaven if somebody didn't nail him down right now. On second thought, fuck stopping, this felt even better than jacking up on meth. He needed to do something now or he was going to explode right there.

Rasengan! No, too small.

"RASENSHURIKEN!"

Instead of the football sized spiked orb, a sphere as big as his room roared into existence. He screamed with laughter right back, flinging his hands about as if to embrace it.

"Old bastard! I never thought I'd see you again!"

Dimly, his ears registered yells below, but he hardly paid them any attention. He was staring past the mammoth rasenshuriken at the skies above, once baby blue but now rapidly darkening to a stormy blue gray. The vortex of his chakra was eating up all the wind in the area. Lighting rumbled once, twice, streaking across the skies in flashes of brilliant white.

Then water poured down from the skies.

This new unexpected event, instead of alarming, only managed to spike him further up on his high. The tiny part of his brain that was still rational observed that his rasenshuriken, because of its sheer size and power, had disturbed the wind streams and air temperature of the whole valley and this abrupt rain was the result. What a phenomenon! He'd have to do more experiment with what else it can do...but right now, he couldn't care less.

Bathed in the rain of his own making, dark morning skies above him and panic cries below, Naruto had never felt more alive.

He spread his arms wide in a one-sided embrace, bent his neck and lifted his face skyward. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth, sucking in the tremors of sensations racing through him, from his tongue, his skin, his eyes, his ears, his nose, from every lungful of life pumped into him, each and every one of them confirming again and again that he was alive and that he was whole once again.

If left alone like that, he didn't know how long he would have stood there, lost in the sensations of his newly reclaimed body, but as it was, somebody interrupted.

He heard a hiss behind him and before he could blink, his whole torso and his left hand were bound tight. He whipped his head back, free arm high up, ready to pull his super-charged rasenshuriken down onto the head of the fool who...

Thirty feet below, Hashirama Senju stood in the rain, hands up in a monk's prayer seal.

"Come down." He said coldly. "The clan head is not finished with you."

Every inch of the boy's body screamed hostile, but the branchless, leafless tree holding him wasn't crushing and inside his sleeve a wooden tendril wrote onto his skin. To top it off, it was writing in the too-formal-for-the-occasion Kanji, and it had perfect penmanship.

_You're scaring them. Come back._

A quick sweep of eyes told him all he needed to know. Hashirama stood alone in the stone yard. Far behind him and protected in the shade were the human flies, drawn out by the smell of blood. Crossbows, slings, throwing wands, hands clasped in preparation. They were about to take him down while he was distracted. If the Senju boy hadn't...well, he wouldn't have died, not with his insane regeneration rate, but Hashirama didn't know that, and it would have hurt like hell with all that spikes, hooks, and poison no doubt.

He locked eyes with the clan heir.

Run or stay?

Drop the Big Ra'. That ought to take out half the valley at this size, and hightailed out of this place in the commotion. He can't kill them now but if anyone died in the stampede then it was their fault for being weak and nosy bastards. Waiting to see if Yoshizawa Senju would keep his promise would be stupid. He was not welcomed here. He had nothing to gain in staying.

Run now, think later.

He gripped tighter on to his rasenshuriken, but moments before he could lug it down, the wood tendril dug into his arm.

_NARUTO_

He jerked in surprise. This was the first time the Senju heir had ever used his name, in private or with audience. A thought flashed across his mind.

He'd get the boy in trouble.

Shit. Shit!

His eyes went from Hashirama to his father, who was standing in the shade, calmly observing them, the mad woman and the foolish son who brought her troubles to the clan.

He knew he had lost before the debate even started. Whatever he wanted to say about it, he lived now because of this boy and this obviously wasn't how Naruto Uzumaki repaid a life debt. He released his grip. The rasenshuriken whooshed and howled in protest of its unsatisfactory death, but instead of dissipating into the atmosphere like all nature chakra based techniques; its raw bulk followed the beacon of his suppressed youki and slowly poured back into him. He slumped down, drunk on the chakra influx.

The unnatural tree holding him moved, drawing itself back to the earth and him with it. On its other end, Hashirama was keeping up his '_you're the enemy of my clan, bitch'_ act except that the boy never cursed.

'_Tsunade, I hope you know the things I do for your grandfather. I hope you're going to pay me back for it. I hope you're gonna pay me back with a whole fucking ramen restaurant_.' He thought bitterly moments before voluntarily putting his head back into the sack.

His gaze slid to Yoshizawa. In stark contrast with his fellow clansmen, the Senju leader wore an almost nonchalant air about him, as if he didn't just see a supposedly weak medic performed an S-class jutsu and was inches away from nuking his home with it. That was the face of someone who had a damn good trump up his sleeve. Already, Naruto could feel his exhilaration trickling out of him as the disquiet flowed in. Boy, wouldn't he feel like a fool if that trump turned out to the Senju clan head's own son?

The moment his feet touched the wet stone ground, the Senju nins closed in a tight circle around him. He threw them a disinterested look as he held out his hand for the handcuff seal.

* * *

He was back in his prison room again.

The grey wall with one window and the bed greeted him with all the allure of a wriggling worm in the core of a bitten apple.

There was no way to go back, that he knew. Outside of his room, his seals alerted him to the presence of foreign seals being put down. There was nothing to do but wait and through this was clearly a step backward to him, Naruto wasn't yet at his corner. He was prepared for even this. If there was one good thing from his self-induced mania in the last month, it was that he was prepped up to his teeth. His chakra node littered the Senju underground halls and barracks, deposited very early on by his scouters, unseen by anyone but him. In the case that things turned nasty, Yoshizawa Senju would find out, at his own cost, that he would be fighting his own house instead. Naruto truly hoped that it wouldn't come to that, but if push came to shove, he wouldn't hesitate again. If push came to shove, he'd take out Hashirama Senju himself, seal him, then deal with the mess unhampered.

These people might be the forefathers of Konoha but there was too much at stakes here for him to let a few archaic ninja lords pushed him around however they wanted. Though he preferred to keep certain events as they were in the original timeline, there was no denying that the future would change, and change very dramatically if he had any say about that. There was no use kitten-footing around the issues. The people of this time lived a brutal lifestyle. To be able to deal with them, he too would have to be brutal.

As long as Hashirama Senju was alive and the younger generations of the Senju untouched, he'd make sure that Konoha rose from the ashes of its father. Whatever it took, he would make sure it happened.

He was jolted from his thoughts by the feel of a coat being draped over him. He looked up, blinked. He hadn't noticed that he was still standing in wet clothes, barefooted.

"Sit down." Hashirama ordered. The boy took from his coat sleeves, which had practically become the magical bag of smuggled goods for the past two weeks, a pair of cloth flats. He knelt in front of Naruto, lifted his right foot from the floor, slipped on the shoe, then did the same to the other foot.

He stared at the boy's attire and the row of scrolls and kunais strapped to his back and thighs. Mission?

A perimeter seal twang in alarm a few meters from his door. Young males. Fully armed. They were waiting for their leader.

A full four-man combat cell. The boy's mission would be a long one then. His mind grappled at this new piece of information.

"Go" He told the boy. "They'd get suspicious if you are in here for too long." Hashirama nodded wordlessly before rising to his feet.

Tonight, thought Naruto. He'd wait until tonight for Yoshizawa's verdict, and if it didn't come or if it wasn't what they agreed on, then he'd break out. Tonight, when Hashirama was gone at a safe distance.

He can't stay here. There were too many things to be done, too much preparation to make. Madara, for once. If that bastard died then the majority of their problems in the future would be cleared off. Then the Bijus which needed to either be destroyed or sealed off in a safe location lest they became weapons of war once again. Kakuzu of Taki. The budding ninja clan of the future Rain. Not to mention, he had to start scouting this world. He needed to create a spy network that spanned the continent, planted his own agents in the current courts of power, had an eye and an ear in all the hotspots of this time if he wanted to stay one step ahead and do what he planned. In war, good information was sharper than any swords.

However...

He looked up then, and saw the Senju clan heir near the door, his back to him. His inside suddenly lit up with fear.

"Wait!" he heard himself saying.

_What if he dies?_ Came the unwanted thought.

None of his plans accounted for the case if the future Shodaime were to die a premature death. It hadn't happened in the original timeline but events had changed. He had no way of knowing for sure that what he had done, saving Yoshizawa, for once, wouldn't come back in a ripple and kill the son instead. Whoever was aiming for Yoshizawa's head...what if they tried for the son's where they failed with the father? What if they did it right on this mission? Naruto wouldn't be there to safeguard him, or even to heal him. If that happened, his hope, his Konoha, would die along with this boy.

Naruto couldn't stop the shiver that ran through his spine at the thought.

What to do?

Kidnap the boy? Ridiculous. Hashirama Senju needed to stay with his clan for the birth of Konoha to take place. Secretly following the boy to protect him at a distance was also out. With his mammoth reservoir and with this many ninjas surrounding the clan heir, many of which ought to be sensors, Naruto'd be discovered in a matter of hours.

He could take tactical use of his now female body, seduced Yoshizawa Senju, became his mistress to stay close and keep a watch on the...no. NO! Absolutely not! Perish the thought, now! The idea of getting anywhere near that blasphemous copy of the third Hokage, of being touched by him, filled Naruto with disgust. He wouldn't be able to do it despite his extensive experience with the Sexy no Jutsu. He wasn't gay, female body or not. And he planned to reclaim his original male body any way so that wouldn't work for the long term.

Could he watch the heir from afar then? Maybe leave a shadow clone in a nearby village as an alarm? No. The clan secrecy would prevent him from getting any information fast enough to act.

There was no way around it. If he were to keep the future Shodaime safe, he'd need to stay within the Senju clan compound itself, but was staying here really an option? Was it really with the way these Senjus lived, clustered together in a dump in the forest with their kunais pointed out at the world?... if he stayed here...

...Madara.

"Naruto?" He blinked, torn from his thought loop. His gaze slid over the boy's face, suddenly landing on his throat. His bare throat.

An idea flashed into his mind.

He held up a hand before concentrating his chakra into it. A shining blue rasengan came into existence. Not enough. The seal on his body snaked up his arm to pool into his palm, holding the chakra stable. The rasengan swirled faster, morphing into a mini rasenshuriken. Still not enough! He crushed the little ball with more chakra, stoking its vortex into a violent spin until it collapsed into itself and shrunk down to the size of a marble.

The now crystallized rasen-ball dropped to his palm. He brought it to eye level, turning it one way and other, looking for possible mistakes. Good balance, round smooth shape. And it was pretty enough to pass as a trinket of sorts. Satisfied with the fruit of his labour, he tossed it to Hashirama who caught it with one hand.

"Lucky charm. Don't lose it."

He wasn't his father, who, with only a chakra node on a kunai, could monitor a perimeter of five metres of the surrounding area. His chakra was too large that all others felt like specks of dust on his senses. The fine points of chakra sensing were lost on him. However, the seal inlaid into the rasenshuriken marble would take care of that. The amount of chakra infused into the ball would ensure that it would last for years as it acted as a semi barrier and a danger alarm. In the case that its wearer was in critical condition, it would teleport him straight to Naruto.

That would have to be enough. Anymore and he would be interfering. He looked at the blue marble, a tiny child's toy, rolling in Hashirama's hand. He should have made it in a different shape, with a hook of some sort to be worn as a necklace, but this was the only shape he could do.

"Don't lose it." He repeated, worried that Hashirama would put it in a box instead of carrying it with him. "Keep it close."

He stood up from the bed, and then looked at the shadow looming outside his door. Their time was up.

"Next time we meet, you better show me your dream."

Then he pushed the boy out.

* * *

He waited till dark fell, sitting cross-legged on his bed, staring at the outside.

He spent the first hour of waiting on his legs, testing it, wiggling the toes, bending the knees. They were good as new now that the pain had left. He cleaned himself in the bathroom, relishing in the euphoria of being able to take care of himself once again.

Mealtime was delivered as usual but he did not touch it.

He did not bother getting out of his room for he knew the moment he stepped so much as a toe pass the threshold he'd tripped up the hundred of alarms under the stonework. So, he sat on his bed, resisted the urge to bounce around like a monkey on crack just to show that he can, and eased his mind into meditation.

The clock ticked away by sunlight, then a weak moonlight, then the night cue call of the Senju servants. He sat and watched them, and waited...waited. When it was finally too dark to see with either the moon or the stars, the witching hour as they called it, the door creaked open and in stepped the Senju clan head himself.

For once, Yoshizawa was completely alone, his usual posse of body guards nowhere to be seen. He looked at Naruto from the doorsill, his face scraped off of any expressions, and with a swing of his hand, he tossed a bundle towards the bed.

"Put that on." He commanded as he deposited something else on the floor before exiting.

Naruto picked up the bundle from his lap. It was a set of standard Senju uniform in cream white medic color, but without any visible Senju insignia.

Something spiked in his stomach. _So easy?_ He thought.

He checked the armours thoroughly for any kind of foul plays, from the inseam of the neck to the inside of the chess plate, and only when all had come up clean did he put them on. He pulled off the pair of cloth flats Hashirama had smuggled to him and stuffed them between the layers of his shirt. Then he put on the walking sandals provided to him. He wrapped the bandages around his pant legs to keep them from getting in the way but he left the billowing sleeves alone. If he needed to modify his hand seals on the run then the bandages would only get in the way.

He took a few more minutes inspecting himself, adding a few rudimentary protections of his own here and there before walking out.

Yoshizawa waited for him by the door and the moment he saw Naruto, he turned without any explanation and started walking. Naruto followed him silently, pacing himself at a distance far enough to intercept any ambush but also close enough so that he couldn't be intentionally dropped off somewhere. The two of them passed the long underground hallways, then passed the staircase matrix, Yoshizawa at the front with a torch light and Naruto at the back.

It was with much surprise that Naruto stared at the main gate and the moonless skies opening up above him. In front of him, the Senju clan head stopped, stepped to a side, then gestured at the wide open gate with his torch-bearing hand.

"We had a deal." He said. "Finish it."

Naruto stared hard at the gate, then at Yoshizawa's face, looking for any hints of the trap about to spring up under him. As far as he could see, the gate was clean. On top of its walls, flames of torchlight danced in the dark. The Senju gate keepers stared down at him from above. The illusion was shattered. They no longer looked at him the way they did when he was just a pale, sick slip of a woman, helplessly trapped to her bed. He had shown them that he could be dangerous...was dangerous. From them, he detected no spike of chakra or ill intention.

It was useless standing there waiting for something to happened. Decide, now!

Without any indication of what he was about to do, without even a bend of the knees, he flung himself pass the gate and into the wood outside. A few gate keepers tensed at his sudden movements but none moved from their spots. He meant to jump all the way to the tree line but at half way, he skid to a stop.

He turned back. Behind him, the tree hummed their windy, leafy song. He was outside, unharmed. Directly across from him, Yoshizawa Senju stood within the gate, looking back at him with a rose eye-brow.

"You serious?" He muttered disbelievingly. "Not even a seal to keep me from squealing your clan secrets?"

Yoshizawa answered him with a sneer. "Someone who can throw in with my foolish son...probably doesn't know how to backstab her saviour, and...who would believe a woman such as you?"

Then the gate closed, the genjutsu snapped shut and Naruto could see him no more.

He stood still, for a while not yet believing that it could be this easy, but that moment passed and suddenly he was feeling like a giant, like he could run the world over as many times as he wanted.

He was free.

He gazed into the dark wood. A dirt path twisted its length between the trees. Then he turned and looked back at the Senju Mountain. There was nothing there but more trees and up-sloping earth. Higher above, clumps of human fireflies dotted the mountain side. A burn rose in him. He was once again leaving his home. And what more? He was forbidden from ever returning. He gave a barking laugh at the thought.

Like hell he would let that happen.

Like hell he'd let an old geezer with half a foot in the grave stop him from coming home.

Though, this was not yet his home, and now was not the time to cling to it. He was the wayward son at the beginning of a long road to find protections for his homeland. When the time was right, when Konoha was Konoha, then, by hook or by crook, by whatever it took, he would come home once again.

With these thoughts in his head, and his heart full of hope, Naruto stood at attention and saluted the part of mountain that would one day become the Hokage monument. In his mind, he could see the faces of the Sandaime, his father, and Tsunade staring down at him in farewell. He grinned his widest grin, and, without a thought that behind that genjutsu the gate keepers were still watching him, yelled his goodbye to them.

"Hasta la vista, baby!"

Then he turned, took the first step, and was swallowed up by the wood.

* * *

Yoshizawa bent down and looked at the thing in the box. He looked at it long and hard before turning up to the person on the other side of the table.

"This was taken out from her body?"

The medic Kenji nodded affirmative.

"This was what prevented her from healing?"

Another nod.

"It's alive?"

The thing stirred as if it had heard him. Its nostril, tiny flaps of red meat, flared as if it was sucking in air.

"I...I'm not sure if it can die."

"She was pregnant?"

The medic was silent for a while.

"The location is wrong. I cannot be sure of her physiology but...I think it might be a twin."

The Senju head stilled in hesitation. He wanted to ask how but ultimately decided against it. He settled for studying the thing instead. He was not unfamiliar with its kind. He had seen them before, from women who didn't want to keep their shame. They were usually abandoned in all kinds of places: in the dumpsters, in the fields, in fish markets, even public restrooms, but those were dead. This thing, on the other hand, was functioning just fine outside of its _'mother'_.

He coaxed its mouth open with one finger to reveal a full set of teeth, four of which were fangs. He drew his hand back, wiping the slime off the finger.

Though they had cleaned the blood and body fluid off it, it remained moist and red...the way a foetus should he supposed. It lied inside the box, not much bigger than a man's hand. Its supine body curved around its head, which was almost as large. One tiny beginning of a hand was up to its mouth as if in parody of a human enfant sucking on his thumb. Though it mostly stayed still, there were moments when tremors ran under its thinly stretched eyelids...as if it were dreaming.

What an abomination. And how fitting of its 'creator'.

Yoshizawa drew himself up, closed the lid on the box, sealed it in stasis. Then he turned to Kenji.

"It had been a rough time for you. Go home, have a break, spend some time with your wife and children. I'll take care of everything else."

The medic rose to his feet, bowed to him in relief before hastily exiting.

Alone in the room, Yoshizawa drew the box into his lap and cocked his ears to the silence.

One minute. Two minutes. There, a sound. Steel slicing through flesh. A series of wet cough through a throatful of blood. It was done.

He rose leisurely to his feet, taking the box with him. Instead of going to the door, he went to the back of the room and opened the gate of the hidden tunnel with a silent Doton. He went in unaccompanied by his body guards. Tonight, they were busy. Just like Kenji, all the people present in the operation would have to be silenced. His special force, right now, were tearing through the compound, taking them in one by one. Within a few hours at most, they would have produced a number of appropriate corpses: clean, prepared, accounted for, and with the correct death wounds. They would be presented to their families and buried according to their ranks. He'd say a few line, shared the grief of loved ones poisoned to death by the rouge kunoichi. And the families, just like the families of deceased veterans in the past, would be taken care of by the clan. And nobody would have to know.

It was regrettable that they had to purge off so many promising apprentices and senior medics, but this was a secret too dangerous to be known by so many people. That woman was dangerous. With such dangerous beast, special weapons were required.

He went deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain, reaching the section only permissible to clan heads, then passed even that to arrived at a secret chamber he had created himself. He entered it silently, stepping over open coffins, winding his way through shelves full of eyeballs in glass jars, several still beating hearts, and a few odd relics here and there. He stopped at the last shelve to put the box on it next to a blood-crusted sword. He took a few moments to take in the newest addition to his collection. Blood of her blood, flesh of her flesh, as were the requirements of any blood ritual. If she ever dared come near his brothers and sisters in the future, then it would be his greatest pleasure to reunite '_mother_' with '_child_'.

With one last look, Yoshizawa sealed the chamber close before going back upstairs to the awaiting pandemonium of the purge he had designed himself, completely assured of his defences against a possible enemy. He didn't know it and in the many years to come, he still wouldn't know what it was he held in his hands that day: not an unborn foetus, not a parasitic twin, not even an abomination of nature, but the remains of the original body of Naruto Uzumaki.

* * *

When his son came home, Yoshizawa Senju was sitting on a mat in the main dojo. Ignoring the tug of the boy's chakra on his senses, he continued his supervision on the training chuunins and genins. In front of him, on a sitting table, were a stack of reports from the Southern region. He corrected the stance of a chuunin and another genin's grip on his wooden bokken as he opened the top scroll.

The yells and thuds of bodies and the sweaty smell of the dojo, instead of disturbing him, actually helped him better concentrate. As clan head for twenty years running, Yoshizawa was very used to multi-tasking.

At the exact moment when he spread open the scroll, the little chakra dot that were his son passed the gate check and headed not to him to report but toward the stair to the underground halls. The boy was running, he realized. In no time at all, the dot was nearing '_that room'_. Yoshizawa made a noise deep in his throat.

_Here we go..._

He snapped the scroll shut, suddenly not feeling like hearing the whines of the leader of Uzumaki Ichizoku on paper. He closed his eyes and concentrated.

For one split second, the dot flared into a ball, trembling angrily in his inner vision before regaining control of itself. It stayed there, in front of the room for a few minutes, wavering back and forth as if in disbelief, before exploding into action. The dot ran up and down the halls, circling over the servant and the medic quarters. Apparently not finding anything of worth, it flew up the stairs, running into the mess hall, hesitated there for a second then backtracked to the Northern gate. It jumped out over the wall without even a notice to the gate keeper dots, then it leaped up the mountain cliffs. There it wove through several spots, pausing to check at each of them. And when even that yielded no sight of what it was looking for, it started its frantic search again over the whole compound.

By that time, Yoshizawa had seen enough. He opened his eyes and called an end to the practice session. On his log, there was only one more person. He called the ninja in, had a talk with him and ended up letting the jounin leave the barrack to visit his nine months pregnant wife. He cautioned the jounin, Han, on the way out and even sent an accompanying team just in case. Requests such as these weren't rare lately. After a stressful time, his men needed their break.

He dismissed his body guards from their posts, explaining to them that he needed sometime alone. In his mind eye, the dot had ended his search in front of '_the room'_. It stood there, bubbling up and down in size as though it couldn't decide what it was feeling.

'_And what do you see that put you in such a state?_' Yoshizawa mocked in his head. He knew, not guessed, but knew exactly what the dot, his son, saw: not an empty room, not even a room at all but just a box of dirt, its tenant long since gone. How did he know? Because he had done it himself. One big bonfire to incinerate the furniture, clothing, and supplies, anything she had touched. The bucket of ashes left he had dumped into the river. An A-class Doton to seal up the room forever. The few people other than him and his son who knew enough about her to talk could now only talk to the worms.

Surely such extreme reactions were unbecoming from someone like him, the head of a major clan, practically royalty of ninjas. However, Yoshizawa had not got to where he was today by being meek and sloppy. That room was no longer a part of his house, he had felt. Others had agreed with him.

Among the younger Senjus, they called it the Vine Forest for the black slithering vines of seal so blatantly displayed like a stamp of ownership on the floor. It had been the stuff of dread for many genins and younger chunins who had come too close. Even Yoshizawa himself was wary, only coming near when he was armed with protections, and even then he never stayed for long.

He meant to study and replicate such a unique seal once she was gone, but the moment he set foot to the heart of the room, he had known at once that that was not possible. '_Vine Forest is the wrong name._' He had thought as the hair on his neck rose up in pinpricks. It was no longer an architectural construction of four walls, a window, and a door, but something that breathed and lived, like a womb made of stone.

And it smelled like her.

He had stood amidst that invisible vapour, feeling each successive breath pushing his olfactory sense further into overdrive. It was a scent that brought to mind fantasies of those languid women made of dark honey, smooth and sweet and terribly sticky. And for a fraction of a second, when his sensory delirium reached its peak, he had imagined if he dug deep enough into the wall he might just find her there, alive and looking at him in the eye.

On the bed, the indent of her body still remained. On the pillow were a few stray strands of golden hair. The sheets were unmade. Her clothes, still warm, lay discarded on it. The bathroom was still wet from the shower she took before leaving. She had stood there, in a little square space of 3x3, her hair down, eyes closed in bliss, and naked under running water. The chair was left jutted out from under the table and the table itself was slightly off its original post. She had sat there in wait, stood up and paced anxiously, then sat down again. Perhaps she had drummed her fingers on the table, her uncut nails hitting the wood in little 'skitchs-skitchs' sounds. And maybe she had pushed and kicked at it while she cursed him to hell in her head.

In short, that woman had left her paw prints all over the place. A place that reeked of female ...in the heart of a military barrack.

Yoshizawa had flown out of that room so fast his head was still spinning when he gave the order to tear everything out, burn them, and burry the rest.

He knead his temple to chase away the migraine that came with every thought of that woman, and when that didn't work, reached into his coat for the flask he always kept on hand, then swallowed two pills from it. He coughed the pills down, annoyed but resigned that his strength was slowly seeping out with age.

Downstairs, the dot seemed to have finally decided on what it wanted because it stirred from its self-imposed vigil, and was heading here in a speed that indicated that it was running as fast as it could.

_Good_, thought Yoshizawa, _let it all end in one big show of fireworks._

Without losing his sedate pace, the Senju clan head picked up his ledger from under the table, and from it unsealed two scrolls. He spread the scrolls next to each other on the table. The left scroll was full of words and diagrams. The right scroll was blank. He picked up a brush, checked if his inkwell was still wet, and started duplicating the scroll in neat longhand.

He managed to get to the fourth paragraph when his opened the door and walked in without asking for permission. With his attention still on the scrolls, Yoshizawa opened their confrontation with a simple statement.

"I did not kill her. She left on her own. Seven days ago."

For a while, Hashirama did not reply. The boy was judging whether he was telling the truth.

"A healer and a seal master of that calibre. She would have been an asset to us."

"And how do you suppose we keep someone like that in our clan, who are mostly men, let me remind you? As your whore maybe?" He heard a single intake of breath. "Let me count it for you. A healer, a fuin master, and a wind adept with power the likes I've never seen before, not to mention an unknown kekkai genkai that borders on invulnerability...and to top it off: female! That is at least jounin...but more likely clan head level. Someone like that should have had her name known in all five Elemental countries. It's not likely that anyone would forget a face and attitude like that. How strange is it that we never knew of her until now? Your proposal...did you think someone like her would deign to stay and play house with a child like you?"

"You're infatuated." Yoshizawa paused momentarily to dip his brush into the inkwell, careful not to let the ink drop onto paper. "...how funny...for a tree to try and catch the wind. Would you throw away everything that you are to chase after a passing stray? What would you tell your wife of this?"

"Fiancée."

"Wife. Soon enough. Seventeen is a good age to start a family."

The girl was Mito Uzumaki: clan daughter, pretty in a plain way, and last he heard a budding talent at sealing art, but more important than any of that was her chakra which was the perfect prison for the Bijus. It was the match of dream. One blood line to capture the beasts and one blood line to imprison and harvest their power. This union would cement the partnership between the Uzumaki and the Senju and become the defence against any insurgency schemes by the more ambitious and purer of blood Senjus. It would be the clan's...it would be Yoshizawa's bid to power and breakage from the Daimyo's stranglehold control.

Abruptly, Yoshizawa stopped writing. He looked up and saw the son a few steps away from him, jaw jutted out, fists clenched, and looking at him with something between a frown and an all out glare. Unbiddenly, a hot spark ignited in his stomach. The sight of such open defiance in those familiar brown eyes stirred from him memories of past grief and rage. The boy had inherited his mother's eyes, unremarkably brown and up-tilted in the corners.

That woman...

_Mokoto,_ his brain supplied the name readily, plain instead of beautiful, meek as a mouse, and disgustingly eager to please. Not someone a clan head would ever bed, much less marry, but she had come from old power and in that time, having a name as backing was as good as having a whole army.

...had had the same eyes and she had looked at him exactly like that and shrieked at him "You bastard! You bastard! I'll kill you!" as they pulled the newborn out from between her slime-streaked thighs. She had had an exceptionally beautiful voice, as if to make up for her lacking of physical beauty. In his more lenient youth, he had, on some nights, tied her to the bed, laid his head on her belly, and let her sing him to sleep. Back in those days, he had floated to his dreams many nights accompanied by the melodic lullaby of her voice. But on that particular day, that voice had turned harpy-like as she screamed – "Get it out! Get it out of me!" – and writhed not from the pain of childbirth but from the hundreds of vines, leaves, and wooden tendrils breaking through her skin, her nostrils, and her mouth. Even to this day, whenever he passed by what remained of her in the underground halls; he sometimes thought he could hear her still screaming her death throes.

And now this wretched child dared to look at him like that. As if he hadn't been sneaking behind his father's back for months. Anger boiled in him. How dared he.

Yoshizawa let the brush drop down the table with a clink, and, with a voice that betrayed none of his feelings, said to his son. "You've been missing practices. Every evening and even some mornings. And one night three weeks ago you didn't come back to your room. Where were you?"

The boy said nothing. He let his silence do the talking. _You know where I was, father_.

They stared at each other, father and son, both knowing exactly what was on the other's mind. It was impossible not to with the years Yoshizawa had kept this child alongside him, seventeen years, counting the days since his son's monstrous birth.

This was all because of that woman, a part of him growled angrily. He should have known she was trouble the first time he saw her...long before they had their little deal. Oddly enough, he remembered the day. Midsummer, the compound flowing with guests from other cousin clans. Hashirama had gone out with a pair of human feet, the remains of a successful mission, to bury only to come back with a whole human body. The boy had cornered him during a conversation with fellow clan heads, knowing that in doing so he'd force his father into giving hasty consent. Yoshizawa had taken one look at the bloody bundle in his arm, which no longer looked human but more like a slab of red meat attached with cut-off stubs that might have been a head or particularly misshapen limbs, and decreed that it was fine if the boy wanted something to play with but until that corpse opened its eyes and proved that it really was alive, no clan resources would be wasted on it. No medic, no servant care. It was wholly the boy's responsibility. And that was that.

Yoshizawa had thought that would be the last he'd ever see of it. Promising talent or not, his son was still a ninja lordling with servants at his beck and call, and he didn't think the boy would actually take up all the hassle of taking care of a filthy wasting human.

He was wrong.

It was a few weeks later that he had found this out. It was the night before he departed for a meeting with the Fire Daimyo. He had gone in search for his son out of curiosity of the boy's thinning presence in the main compound for the past several weeks. He had gone to the boy's room, empty, to his garden, empty and in slightly worse shape than it usually was, to the dojo, also empty. He had tuned in his sensory then, and followed the chakra traces to the West wing infirmary, his minds teeming with questions the like of: just what was his son doing in an infirmary? Odder yet, it was one of the lesser used one, reserved only for particularly grievous cases where secrecy or isolation was required. The hallway was dark when he had come to it, but the door was slightly ajar. The light flickered in and out from between the crack, the shadow of someone walking in the room.

Even to this day, Yoshizawa did not know which part of him had cautioned against calling out for Hashirama in the dark hallway. Instead, he had walked in silence to the door, then stopped right in front of it, stunned at the sight offered him through the crack.

A woman's body lay naked in an iron-cast tub in the middle of the infirmary, head leaning on its curved lip, legs dangling out, and skin glistening in blood red water. Yoshizawa had stood there outside of the room, too stunned to move for several minutes. _Who? How? Why?_ Were the questions and only with a few more minutes of calming down had he started to notice the field of lacerations and burns on her body, some of which were open and bleeding. His son knelt at her feet, one hand holding her thigh in place, one hand pulling the clumsy stitches from her black and purple skin. The boy was so absorbed with his work that he didn't even notice the momentary flare of chakra right outside the door.

It was the corpse! Yoshizawa had thought, reeling at this information. The thing that barely resembled a human when he first saw it had somehow regenerated itself back to this. But this realization instead of shedding light on his questions, only managed to confuse the Senju clan head further.

He had rooted himself there, slightly disgusted and somehow afraid but also unable to move from that spot, and watched as his son washed the woman by hands, brushed her hair and cleaned her feet, dried and re-bandaged her, diapered and dressed her before putting her to bed...all of these done with an intense sense of patience, concentration, meticulousness, and tenderness he had never ever seen from the boy before.

Why? Why was his son doing this? Why would he, a proverbial prince of ninja, lower himself to...well...that? What was the cause for such dedication?

He went back to his room in a dreamy state of déjà vu, his mind empty of any answer. There wasn't anything to do. He had said yes and with forty years on the job, he had seen his fair share of odd hobbies. Besides, the Daimyos waited. There was no time to get fuzzy with his home affair. Still, the woman's face stayed with him. Under soft candle light, she slept so peacefully, so unknowingly of the force with which she drew others to her.

There was absolutely nothing woman about her. She did not talk like a woman which should only be when asked of her. She did not act like a woman, which was to stay out of the way and in their proper places. She did not even look like a woman should, pleasant enough to be enjoyed for a few seconds but not too striking as to become a distraction to more serious matters. No, she absolutely did not look like how a woman should. Hers was a face that dominated weak minds, that forced men on their knees in worship and pass their boundary of sanity into obsession. It was a beauty as cruel and cutting as cold steel, sadistically brutal in its utter obliviousness.

In the two months that her presence was known to all, discipline suffered. His clan was as a hive disturbed by a strange wasp, the way men without wives were disturbed by an errant woman in their midst. He had seen the way the younger, less experienced Senjus stood stock-still at the sight of her through the window or the door, unable to pull their eyes away, practically licking at that face with their eyes, the way tongues worked at ice-cream, with that typically stupid, single-minded expression on their faces that went with concentrated licking. He had watched as they shirked his caution to stay away and bent even when he ordered them.

The older Senjus, though they had managed to dodge some of her effects on them, knew enough to steer clear of temptation. They hid in the shadow and watched her from there, torn between a maddening mixture of want and fear. Even the oldest and strongest of them, a man who had once been cubs along with Yoshizawa, had come to him pleading. "Not a woman Yo-kun." He had said to the Senju leader using the name they used when they were children. "Please don't make me. Not that one. Not her." And Yoshizawa had understood perfectly what the man was trying to say with stunted words. _Don't make me kill her. I can't. I can't ever._

It was then that Yoshizawa finally knew just what he had been housing then. Demon. Witch. Youko. The way her chakra seemed to swirl and collapse into a black-hole on itself only managed to further convince him of this truth. And to add insult to the injury, this wretched creature was brought into his home, into his land by his own bewitched son.

If Yoshizawa hadn't seen its first pathetic appearance with his own eyes, he would have attributed his son's behaviour to that face. But the truth that he had seen it and was disgusted by it put a further stress on the question _'Why?'_

But now, perhaps it no longer mattered. She was gone and she would never be back.

"Draw your sword." Yoshizawa said curtly, taking tiny relish at the way his son's eyes widened and his body stiffened when he saw his father picking up not a wooden boken but a steel katana. "Let us see how much practices you've missed." He stood up from his seat, didn't bother with safety mask and armour, and with two long strides, he was in front of Hashirama. Forgoing the formal bow, he opened their fight with a hissing sideway slash. Hashirama easily parried it. He followed it up with more slashes and a chest thrust. All delivered with practices swiftness and wicked precision. He watched Hashirama's face. The boy was guarded. He was hesitating, Yoshizawa realized.

"What's on your mind?" A diagonal two-handed kote sliced through the air a mere centimetre from his son's ear. Hashirama said nothing to his question. "You're not giving it your all. Having second thoughts?"

Three more close strikes, he was pushing the boy back. There was vicious triumph in that, but there was also disappointment. Yoshizawa took three steps back and from there he circled his son slowly, studying him from all angles. In the heat of battle, even the most closed-off warrior let out things they normally hid. He angled his sword down, its head nearly touching the ground, ready as he walked. "You put her in the heart of your circle didn't you? I always wonder why I knew so late what she was up to. Some errant servants. Jounins and chuunins that forgot to report to me. How many of them swore fealty to you?"

Sideway slashed. Deflected. But Yoshizawa could see that he was spot on. Despite himself, he had to admire his son. The boy had a way with people. In spite of being feared for his demon suppressing kekkai genkai and his status as murderer of his own mother, Hashirama had still managed to seduce plenty of jounins and chuunins to him.

This information acquired, Yoshizawa abandoned his post and went on furious offense. He pushed the boy back step by step even as he wore down his mind. "You were trying so hard to protect that woman. What were you trying to do with her?" A slash grazed Hashirama's cheek with a thin red line. "But it doesn't matter now, doesn't it? She's gone and she's never coming bac..."

All of a sudden, it was Yoshizawa who was stumbling back, sweating as he countered strike after furious strike. He stared into the boy's eyes, something burning behind it. "Got your raw nerve?" He taunted even as he blocked and took another step back. Hot rage swelled up within him.

How dared this wretch do this to him, his father? And for who? A cunt with a pretty face?

Yoshizawa swung his sword in reply, hitting the other katana in one noisy clang. This time he put his weight on it and kept both swords stuck there in between them. Through the crossed blades, he scoffed and whispered to the boy. "After you finished washing her and putting her to bed every night, did you lay down next to her?" He felt the falter immediately. "On her?...in her?"

He swung one slash upward. The other katana hung back in stupor, unable to prevent the clean path of steel up the boy's cheek, up further and passed the widened eye – a popping sound deliciously sweet to Yoshizawa's ears – before ending its trajectory above his forehead.

Yoshizawa stood calmly as his heir stumbled backward, screaming in pain and confusion. Blood and white gelatine poured from the boy's face. Yoshizawa sneered. Losing composure because of a little wound, his heir was a child still, but at least the boy was still standing up and holding his sword in a tight grip.

"I cannot fault your technique. You've certainly kept up your practice." He said as he wiped the blood off his sword. "It is your heart that is weak." Then he re-sheathed it, turned his back on the boy, and walked to the door. He stopped halfway. A life-long wound certainly was a lesson not easily forgotten, but the anger and frustration built up over the last two months still burned in his stomach. Though Yoshizawa was not one who easily gave into his emotions, this time, he couldn't resist squeezing his son's still open wound.

"I and that woman, did you know we had a deal?" He said with a sneer. "She never told you, did she? She was to leave the moment she was healed. For all the things you've done for her, she never once trusted you. Why, you don't even know her name!"

He heard the wounded silence behind him and knew that he had gotten what he wanted. He laughed at the utter stupidity of it all and resumed his walk to the door. He managed to take another three steps before he heard a quiet voice at his back.

"But I do know her name." _...what?_

The sword entered him so swiftly and so silently that he didn't even registered the pain until he saw its head poking out from his chest. He turned his head back in shock and saw his son's face looking at him over his shoulder, his one single brown eye reflecting the light in pinpricks of red.

"Don't blame me, father." The boy said to him, his voice suddenly far away, as if spoken through a wall. "I'm a ninja. This... is how you taught me to live."

**End chapter 3**

**End part I.**

So how many 'holy shit!' did you yell when you read this chapter? Or were you too distracted by all the vibes between Hashirama Senju and Naruto?

I predict two camps after this chapter: one is cheering on the supposed pairing, the other is about to roast me in a pig roast. Whatever you want to believe is none of my business, but seriously, you've seen the amount of plot twists and reveals in the first three chapters alone, is that the conclusion you want to put your money on?

All I'm gonna say is: don't read the story if you want romance. This is not a romance story whether the romance is in it or not. Don't read it because of the pairing whether one exists or not. Beauty is in the uncertainty of whether you're going to get your satisfaction. Just enjoy the story for what it is, speculate all you want, but don't jump to conclusion. With the amount of plot twists this story has, you're more likely to jump into a hole.

If you don't like it then it's fine. Don't force yourself. You know which button to push. I knew from the start that this story is not for everyone, not with the amount of raw nerves it touches upon. Sexuality isn't a topic easily discussed rationally.

Anyway, just so you know, **Mito Uzumaki** is an authentic character of the Naruto series. She just debuted in chapter 500. Luckily, the plot line I sketched out is flexible enough to include her and the original Uzumaki clan in it. I plan to bring in the darker and more realistic side to the clan's relationship. Have you ever thought it's strange for the village of the Shodaime's wife and the supposed close ally of Konoha to be destroyed so easily without any mentioning of Konoha ever helping them? Better yet, the survivors instead of going to Konoha as logic dictates decided to scatter all over the world. The use of the Uzumaki symbol as the sign of friendship sounds a little bit too much like the Uchiha police force for me.

The Senju military system is based on the system used in the time of the historical Shinsengumi. In the time that I created the clan profile and all the intrigues between characters I tried to read a lot of documents on ancient Japan and China warfare (the yellow scarf rebel). For the political side, I read from England's war of the Roses for all the in-family fighting.

Anyway, for any grammar mistakes I made in the chapter I'm sorry. I know I'm not exactly the shining beacon of grammatical correctness (non-native speaker here), but I do try. It's just that the amount I have to check every time is humongous (and for this chapter, it's a whopping twenty-two thousand words. That's 5-7 times the length of an average Naruto fic chapter.) so it's very easy to overlook mistakes. Plus, my first priority is always on the characterization and the plot line (you can see the amount of thoughts, planning and research invested in each chapter. No chapter is ever filler material) and I don't really have that much free time between my job and my family you know, so grammar has to suffer a little bit. I usually work without a beta. It's a long project that requires a lot of dedication. It's not fair to ask another person to drop whatever they have to concentrate on my personal obsession. (And in my case, it doesn't work long time. They get scared off with all the twisty plot lines and the fast pace I demand from them. Man...).

If it really bugs you that much, just write it in your review and I'll fix it.

The part of Hashirama taking care of Naruto when he was unconscious, I already put like a ton of hints in the first two chapters but somehow nobody ever picked up on it (too distracted with the gender bending?). The most obvious would be: if Naruto has a female body then what the hell was Hashirama doing un-bandaging him in the first scene of the first chapter?

And lastly, for this chapter, I only drew one picture. It's the first fully coloured picture for Tis Femina and it's named 'The tree that wants to fly'. I initially wanted to draw two more: 'Monkey on the three top' and 'The remains of Adam' but didn't have the time to actually do it. And yes, I know. I'm not exactly good at subtle naming. Oh, what the hell. Bold is the way to go, brothers and sisters!

Sythe

P.S: again, if you can, please tell me what you like and hate from this chapter. Next chapter will probably come a little bit late as I really need to take a break from all this marathon writing.

* * *

**Hashirama Senju: A character study. **(I debated whether I should do this or not but in the end I did, because the part in here won't come into the story in the future and this is the end of the Senju part anyway)

Let me tell you right away that I see the canon Hashirama as one big fat Mary Sue (or Gary Stu if you want to get technical). Everyone loves him. His wife was the first Kyuubi jinchuriki and he made her happy. The whole Fire country voted for him as Hokage...without even one dissenting vote except Madara's. Does that sound like one big stinking fish to you? Not even Jesus got that kind of vote. But Hashirama Senju is such a central character of his time line that I couldn't exactly block him out of the plot. So I decided to take in everything Kihimoto had ever told us about him, and from that, build a realistic well-rounded character.

I portrayed Hashirama Senju in the first two chapters as your typical goody two-shoes boy-next-door, uptight-prince type he is usually portrayed in most Naruto fics just so I have the pleasure to completely shatter that image in the third chapter. Because this is what I believe him to actually be.

Hashirama's character was essentially sketched out for me by his ideal, his family, Konoha, and his rival Madara. I started first with his Will of Fire ideal which was to love every Konoha citizen equally. As Naruto pointed out in this chapter, it sounds good in a teenage manga series but if viewed under a more realistic scope, it's just another way of saying "I don't really love anything exceptionally. They are all the same to me." And that alone is very telling of the sayer's character. So at that first step, I determined that the image he projected wasn't who he really was but who he wanted to become...or on a more sinister note, who people wanted to see from him.

Second was how his family and Konoha saw him, as a charismatic, optimistic, and loving man fighting for peace. This image came off as seriously naive for a character who was supposed to be the best killer of his era. More than that, he has a unique kekkai genkai that can suppress even the most powerful demons, essentially gaining control of the biggest cannons in history. That sort of power usually comes with hate, fear, and discrimination especially in the war-torn period he was in. For a child who grew up amidst war and killing for money, and hated and feared for something he had no control over, that sort of image while sweet just doesn't fit. Again, it seems more like what people want to see from him, a smiling and harmless man with a relatively benign power: to manipulate wood, than what he really was.

Third was Madara, his rival and opposite image. I was especially interested in their competition for the Hokage seat. Surely Hashirama did not get all the votes like how they told the children in canon, but the truth was he did get the majority of votes over Madara, essentially making people (including civilians who were likely afraid of ninjas in that period and Madara's own kin) believe he was the more trustworthy leader figure even when he was the better killer between the two. Comparing Madara and him, it was easy to see Madara was a spoilt brat (figuratively speaking). Madara was used to being accepted within his fellow Uchiha so he never came under scrutiny for his seen-as-hostile kekkai genkai and Madara lived in a world where the strongest ruled and logic triumphed over human emotion. Madara never had to hide himself to get what he wanted. The result was Madara absolutely failed when he had to compete in the political arena with Hashirama.

You can see this in our world. The most powerful people in the world are not the strongest nor the most intelligent but those with the most people backing them: the political and religious leaders of the world. Madara's way of thinking: 'the strongest rules' no doubt worked in the lawless time of war and in military clans like the Uchiha but the moment the situation changed, on a different arena, it quickly became outdated and juvenile in comparison to the more sophisticated thinking of Hashirama: 'to fight to gain people's heart, not their defeat or obedience.' In the beginning of a peaceful period, not even the most experienced soldiers want to be reminded of the horror of war. People want to see a benevolent leader, one who smiles and protects them, and Hashirama gave them exactly this.

When you look at it like that, Hashirama Senju's genius was not his battle prowess, though it undoubtedly helped, but his political sensitivity and his ability to know exactly what people wanted to see and supplied them with it. In other words, the ability to make people fall in love with the illusion of who he was.

Better yet, even his family saw him as this. A character who can hide himself so well that not even his closest people knew...perhaps not even Hashirama himself knew. A self-denied man... who creates his own image based on what people want to see in order to get what he wants...whether he knew what he really wanted or not. I don't imagine that to be a very pleasant way to live, and when you consider that he most likely developed this ability in his formation year. That's very telling of the environments he grew up in and his family isn't it?

Then, Naruto Uzumaki came into the picture. Let me put it this way for you. Naruto is characterized by his ability to reach and bring out suppressed parts of person's personality (just count the people he has performed his Jesus no Jutsu on and you'll know what I meant) and being brutally honest when it comes to voicing out these hidden parts of their mind. Put him next to a character who takes what people want to see and put it on like an overcoat. These two personalities are bound to clash. And the fact that they met when Hashirama was in a volatile period of his development...

This element actually is what defined Hashirama's relationship with Naruto. He wants but he also fears and the fear itself actually heightens the want. In the first two chapters you can see that Naruto has yet to see through Hashirama's behaviour (in the first chapter acting like a hormonal teen boy, second chapter, uptight but essentially good and honest person) but in the third chapter Naruto completely hits him in the face. He's afraid of this new part of himself that was brought out and so wholeheartedly accepted by Naruto but he's also excited. He's confused and he doesn't know what he wants yet but he at least knows that he wants Naruto to stay so that he can find out.

Under this light, you can see that Hashirama's final action in this chapter really is not murder but a defensive reaction to protect this newborn part of himself. If Yoshizawa were to live, then this part of his personality would probably die stillborn.

I guess this part is really pushing it for some people but I don't regret it. It was extremely hard for me to create and write this character because he's so different from what I'm used to and everything he did, no matter how small, usually came with layers of meaning, but so far I like what I've created.

In the end, meeting Naruto is the point of divergence for Hashirama. From this point on, the suppressed part of himself is released and his development takes a different course from canon...and...who knows what will come of it.


	4. Chapter 4: The Flesh Café

Disclaimer: I don't own. I repeat, I don't own.

Beta: Michelle Tran (XOXO)

Part II: Uchiha

I. Eva Luna

**Chapter 4:**** The Flesh Café**

"_He ate him up from head to toe, chewing the pieces nice and slow. It took an hour to reach the feet, because there was so much to eat, and when he finished, Pig, of course, felt absolutely no remorse. Slowly he scratched his brainy head and with a little smile he said, 'I had a fairly powerful hunch, that he might have me for his lunch. And so, because I feared the worst, I thought I'd better eat him first.'"_

- The Pig by Roald Dahl -

* * *

Naruto's first night outside of the Senju clan fortress was spent in a dream-like state, during which he followed the one-way dirt path deeper into the forest at the pace of a sleepwalker. Though there were undoubtedly many things waiting to be done, it was best that he not hurry now.

The first reason for this would be because his body was still recovering from a month-long mental and physical siege, as well as a major regeneration. Second, he had no food, no money, no weapons, and absolutely no backup whatsoever. Third, he had no idea where he should head off to just yet. Obviously, his first destination should be a city, perhaps a capital from which he would extract information of the current political atmosphere, of ninjas in general, of the Uchiha in specific, and start drawing the blueprints to his plans. But to do that, he'd need to wait until morning in order to navigate. The forest was dark. The trees were old. And it was all too obvious that this was not the Konoha forest he had grown up in. The difference of a hundred years was probably enough of a reason to scrape off the maps in his head and started anew.

The conclusion to all of these was it would be best for him to take it slowly, conserve his strength for now, and not to shoot off his rocker or he might have to backtrack himself come morning.

With these thoughts in his head, Naruto wandered the forest blindly with his face skyward and his feet on auto-pilot – walking not to gain any ground or to go anywhere but just to confirm that he was really up and running, and this was not all a sweet dream of trees, moon, skies, and freedom, and he would not wake up to find himself facing the nightmarish reality of the Senju stone dungeon or the charred and barren landscape of the future – walking just to feel the pump of his muscles and to know that he really was alive.

Though he knew that there was a large chance that he was being watched right now by a Senju scout – he was still in their territory after all – he had absolutely no worries. If Yoshizawa had any ill intentions, the Senju clan head wouldn't have bothered releasing Naruto out into this open field where he had far more chances of making a successful escape. Plus, Naruto did just spend the last two months being constantly watched by them while mostly defenceless. Compared to that, this was a walk in the park.

When Naruto finally tired of the walking, he stopped by the massive roots of a tree, then sat down there and waited. The night sang him a lullaby of life, of whispering leaves, gurgling water, and buzzing insects – meaningless noises to others but they were the most beautiful sounds to Naruto's ears. He felt his body lulled into the song and his soul quiet and sink all the way into the earth and there it lay, rested and at home.

This was heaven compared to the future he had escaped from, a landscape of rocks, bones, and black Amaterasu fire that kept gnawing at what little was left.

And just like that, Naruto breathed out one long exhale, within which held all the exhaustion, pain, and loss of not just the two months with the Senju, but the whole ten years he had been at war. And there, cradled in tangles of roots and on the leafy forest bed, he slept his first true sleep in many years, finally feeling safe and at peace.

Perhaps on some instinctive, unconscious level of his mind, he had known and that was the true reason he had taken his time that first night. Perhaps intuition. Perhaps he didn't and it was simply pure chance. Either way, in the end, he was lucky to have been granted a night of rest, for this would be the last moment of calm he would have in a long time to come before the nightmare began.

Naruto started his work from the minute the sun began to seep into the baby morning sky and woke him from his sleep. He jumped up to the tree tops and with a short sweep, determined that there was not a hint of civilization nearby. The forest spread all the way from the foot of the mountains to the horizon, split in half by a slender river. Behind his back was the Senju Mountain. On his front, left, and right, was the never-ending army of trees and periodical open grassland. While this was undoubtedly the plains of Hi no Kuni, it was also the landscape of a hundred years past, empty of the bridges, temples, and fun towns of his time, untamed and untouched by human hands.

As far as he remembered, the capital of Fire country was three days worth of travel north of Konoha, but he was sure that it was nowhere near a hundred years old, so heading North now was a probably a long shot. He looked at the river then – not the Nakano as it was heading West instead of South – and decided to follow it. Where there was water, there were bound to be human settlements nearby. As long as he could find a village, even a backwater one, he could ask for directions to larger cities. With this decided, he jumped down from the tree top and headed towards the general direction of the river.

He started out fast, weaving and jumping his way between the trees, spurred on by a sense of urgency. There was much to do, information that was needed, people to find, and summon beast clans to contact... especially the summon beast clans. Alone, he wouldn't be able to do half of the things he set out to. He needed a power base of his own, a pseudo clan so to speak, and the summon beasts with their seer sages were probably his best chance at it.

He followed the river course for three days, drinking its water when he was thirsty and hunting the animals that had come to drink when he was hungry. At the end of the third day, it was all he could do not to fly into the forest, find something ugly and kill it very _very_ slowly.

The frustration came not from the lack of village in sight but rather from his clearly defunct body.

It had started out slow and innocuous, with a weird but not unbearable feeling – like someone had wrapped a water bed around him. His body moved oddly. Its muscle bounced and buoyed in places where it shouldn't. It moved like it had bags of liquid sloshing around under its skin while he ran. Gradually, the feeling strengthened. His balance felt off, as if he was running on a meter-high pole with his upper body pitched forward and not flat ground. His hips felt as if a motor rotator was grafted into the sacroiliac joint. His range of view looked as if someone had flattened it down and pulled it at two side-ends, making it a pan-cake sort of vision. The effect was such that when he had passed a particularly dense woodland area and hadn't paid enough attention, he had run face first into a tree. And when he had started frog-hopping, the two lumps attached to his (very manly) chest had bounced along with the up-and-down motion and **fuck** did that hurt! After that, he'd quickly descended right back to the ground, hands snaked inside the too large armour and fastened onto his quivering, involuntarily-acquired female appendages. They weren't the outrageous size of his Sexy no Jutsu, but they were a handful nonetheless, and their mass and weight were apparently plenty to pack a punch to his back and torso at a jump of sixty feet up the air.

He had kept on going then with his hands as makeshift breast-supports but it hadn't lasted long courtesy of the unnerving sensation coming from his hands and his chest both. He felt like a lecher perving on the disembodied bouncy bon-bon of some invisible lady and that said lady was going to turn around and slap him six feet into the ground any moment now. But on the other hand, he was also pissed off the top of his head and if he could just find the mug of the freak whose hands were groping his (still manly) chest, he was going to break that lil' bastard a new nose. During all of this mad cat-chases-its-tail, Naruto was sure that he must appear a nut to anyone who might be watching. He could see it, clear as day, in his head, a Senju sentry poking his partner under their leafy camouflage with one palm up. "Fifty bucks! Told ya that one's got a few loose screws."

In the end, he stopped, pulled out the bandages from his legs, and with it tied a crude halter-neck around his troublesome lady lumps. Despite his best efforts, they kept spilling out and pinched their pink-topped nipples – damn were those suckers sensitive! And damn it, he did not like being on the receiving end – on the thin cotton strips. But for now they would have to suffice.

The big shocker, however, didn't come until the morning of the second day when Naruto had woken up to the pinch of the nature call any healthy person after sixteen gobs of river water and a full night sleep would feel. He had untied his sash, pulled the front of his pants down a little bit ...only to stand there stupidly with one hand curled in front of his opened trousers, ready to take hold and aim the thing that was no longer there.

'_Oh hell no..._'

Never before in his life had Naruto been hit by a double whammy of both horror and wonderment of such force before. Wonderment at the fact that, despite all odds, he had managed to delude and lead astray his conscious mind from the topic of his 'current body' for over two months. And horror... well what was a guy supposed to feel when he woke up one day and found his membership card to the male club apparently confiscated over night? Sure he had seen it, his 'body'. Sure he had known it. Hell, he had even watched as the servant washed, scrubbed and dried it, female bits included, every day since the last two months with the fascination and meticulousness of a practiced surgeon of an Orochimaru lookalike. But somehow, the overwhelming amount of evidence failed to hammer the truth into his head and only managed to push him further away from it.

It had all felt unreal. The servant's hands, like the hands of a ghost, hadn't registered on his senses. And for all that time that he was stuck with this body, before now, his normal everyday functions had only changed to the degree that he couldn't sleep on his stomach because of the flesh wedge – a little bit of extra fat, not that much different from a beer belly – on top of his chest. It had felt like watching a reality TV show with a woman main character, or playing a 3-D RPG using a female avatar. He was inhabiting that body, yes. Those legs, thighs, and the thing between them were attached to his torso, yes. But they hadn't felt like they were his.

With the manner of a man approaching a rather peeved-looking lion, Naruto inched one finger down, felt around the incredibly soft skin of his navel, up the slope of the Venus mound, and pulled on a fine blond thread of hair. The twinge of pain in reply felt like a fifty-ton punch right to his face, its impact compounded with the long delayed realization and the vague awareness of how moronically he had... was... behaving.

It was like one of those old game shows where the host would ring the bell and signal for the confetti ball to blow right on top the stupidified-by-shock dude's head and it went like an internal fire drill. "Ding ding ding! We have a WINNER! Uzumaki-san, how are you feeling about your sudden death round prize? Let me remind you the prize for this round is ..." Cue the girl in the two-piece bikini waltzing across the TV screen bearing a board with a big number on it, smile-flashing and cleavage-dipping to draw the audience's attention away from the ape-like expression on the winner's face.

He had never liked those shows. They always tried to shark out the winners and there was always one poor bastard who got in over his head – usually the one to get nailed in the Sudden Death round. He remembered wincing every time he saw that expression appearing on the screen, brows low and mouth hung and caught between '_oh, that's real good_.' and '_right, what's the catch?_' without a clue of what to do.

Naruto was sure he had worn that face then, alone in the middle of a forest with his trousers open, hand curled and _agonizingly empty_ in front of it. He had stood there for about ten minutes or so until his bladder knocked him on his skull and very politely reminded him that shock or not, it still had its business to attend to and that he better squat down now or else.

He had squatted, screwed his eyes shut, and let his body do its business. He was dazed with a penicillin shot of surreality and humiliation both. In his mind, the voice of Kiba Inuzuka gonged "Hah, women! What can they do? They can't even pee above grass-head." This statement came around the time when Kiba, caught up with hormones and deep in the phase that all boys went through before becoming men, had felt the need to prove his masculinity by being a pig to the other half of the human species. The Inuzuka heir was in that phase for exactly five minutes when the unappreciative kunoichi of Konoha and Suna had quickly and efficiently _re-educated_ him.

Though Kiba wasn't here and had absolutely nothing to do with Naruto's plight, that churning ball of frustration, anger, and confusion rolled without release in his stomach still. And then there was that tickle of green grass blades on his bare thighs and knees. Naruto had decided then and there that if he ever met Kiba again, and if he ever heard an encore of that grass statement, he was going to kick him so hard the Inuzuka would taste his own shit.

On the third day, his brain had caught up somewhat to the _sich'_.

It was a nightmarish biology class on the anatomical differences of men and women with his body as the teacher and he the unfortunate bastard stuck to the front row seat with the clock hanging up above, forever pointing at 11:59 AM. Just one more minute till break-time _but ah-ah, punk, we ain't gonna be near that anytime soon_.

The female human body had a different shape and structure, softer, rounder, with more fat disposition and less muscle mass than its male counterpart. Pelvic bones were different. Balance point was set lower. Thinner skin and bone.

When he considered these points, it was easy to see why his body reacted the way it did. The differences weren't obvious when he was stuck and inactive back in the Senju fortress, but the moment he started running and jumping at high speed, they had practically splattered right into his face.

Furthermore, there was his distorted vision. Theoretically, women had superior peripheral and night vision than men, courtesy of the double amount of corneal rod cells on their X chromosomes. The fact that his vision was no longer as far and good in broad day light meant a change far deeper than simple surface additions and subtractions. Change of vision meant change of genetic material, of DNA and chromosomes, XX instead of XY, and it was far more worrying than the simple cosmetic transformation he had thought it was.

Up until now, he had only thought it... not far from a switch of flesh suit, like putting on a pair of breasts and tucking away the other male bit, perhaps a mistake caused by the trauma of both time travel and demon swallowing and who knew what else was in the mix of Uchiha secret jutsu and Toad Sage interference, and that deep inside, he was still male through and through. This revelation, however, changed everything.

A new genetic code meant a wholly different person, meant that if he were to test his blood right now it would not turn up the same with the Naruto Uzumaki entry in the blood data bank in the future, meant that he now had a different brain structure, different number of connective neurons and cerebral tissues, a different biological cycle, more estrogen instead of testosterone, a different psyche, generative, and reactive system... and a whole herd of other things he didn't care to name. If before, he could, to some degree, predict the problems caused by this new body and attempt damage control, now he couldn't even begin to guess what this all meant to him. They would cause problems, yes. But how far? And how deep? And what could he do to counteract it? It wasn't like this had happened before.

However, more important than any of that were the two questions: How? And why?

If he were to think about it logically, his original male body possessed a single X chromosome from his mother and a Y from his father. If he was completely female now, double Xs instead of XY, then just where did that second X come from? From his mother? Can't be. If that was the case then he should have been turned into her clone. The mere fact that he still had his blonde hair and whisker marks vetoed this option. From this father? Impossible. The single X his father had, which came from the paternal grandmother, can only be transferred to a female offspring, which he wasn't before this Freaky Friday switcheroo. And despite the undeniable power of his regeneration, he doubted even it could create something out of nothing. The only viable source left then would be the Bijus... which opened up a whole other can of worms. If that was true, then did that mean half of him was made of demon then? Was he a half demon in term of biology? Could that even happen? The Bijus were chakra monsters. This, on the other hand, was flesh and blood, one hundred percent tangible and inheritable to any children he might father... mother... no, _no!_... **father** in the future.

Whatever the answer was, Naruto was sure that he would not like it.

Then, there was the matter of why. Why was he turned into a woman in the first place? None of the previous jinchurikis had spotted any outrageous modification to their bodies, including the Sage of Six Paths if the legends were to be trusted. Aside from a few quirks and extra powers, they had all remained true to their human forms and assigned gender. Why was he the only one changed? Why a woman? What could this body do that the original one could not? Why not some gigantic monster? Why not a fox or an ushi-oni? Why change him at all?

Again he came up empty of answers.

This, in itself, was a potential disaster waiting to happen. He had no doubt that his taijutsu, ninjutsu, reflexes, and reaction time were already impaired by the more obvious physical changes. To leave the root cause of them in the dark would be the equivalent of leaving a ticking time bomb in his own body. He had no idea what it all meant and what it could potentially further mutate into in the future. Better yet, he had no way to figure out the answers. Any sorts of examination he could think of required equipment and technology far beyond this time... perhaps even beyond his own time. Now more than ever, he needed the help of the summoned beasts, the Slugs in particular.

The moment Naruto figured this out, he wanted to stop and start grafting a connecting seal on the fly, right there. The consequences of such a reckless action stopped him however. First, the ritual of forging a contract with the Summoned Beast realm was highly complicated, requiring a certain time, place, and chakra-receptive ink and paper. A crude seal carved into the earth, no matter the skill, would have more a chance of blowing in his face than opening the door to Myobokuzan Mountain.

Second, he was a complete stranger to even the Toad clan at this point in time. Even the most pacifistic of them probably wouldn't take too kindly to an unknown human barging uninvited into their home.

The only option available to Naruto, much to his chagrin, was still to find that damn backwater village and ask for direction to greater civilization. So there he remained at the end of the third day, walking along the river bank and mentally cursing the heavens in seven languages.

For all the distance he'd covered, Naruto had not seen a trace of human activity, no trampled grass beds, no broken branches, no smoke puffs of a nearby camp-fire. It was just him, the trees, the animals, and the god-damned river that kept going, going, going, completely clean of the telltale grease of human wastes.

If his guess was correct, after three days of constant walking, he should be near the border now, and still there was no village in sight. This era really was the backlog of time to be so desolate of human settlements.

He stopped at sun down, feeling that prodding need to give it a rest, if only for a few minutes. For a while, he stood under the tree groves inspecting the damage that a three day trek through a forest did to his clothing. The cream white cotton, unlike the ninja fabric of the future, wore all of its wounds proudly on its face: bodily stains, dried animal blood, crushed grass, mud, dirt, wear and tear from tree branches. A concoction of the smell of smoke, sweat, and the indefinable but very recognizable odour of a person who hadn't bathed in three days straight emanated from him. And he had nothing else to change into.

So the Senju clan head wasn't just a bastard, but a stingy bastard. It could also be the custom of this time, low hygiene and all that, but with the mood he was in, he'd go with stingy bastard.

He sighed and approached the river, one hand already unclasping the straps of his armour.

He wobbled left and right on his legs, still unused to the sashaying motion of his body. He couldn't remember just how many times he'd tripped or ran his face into something for the last three days because his hips decided to veer left where his feet went right and vice versa. What a ridiculous way of moving! Just how the hell did women walk with this? And in high heels! Just how did they run or fight without falling on their faces for that matter? The pendulumic swinging alone went against every principle of economic movement. Not only was it a waste of energy to make so many unnecessary dips and juts, it also gave away one's next move to the enemy. Not to mention, after all that bobbing and flopping, it was giving him the weirdest case of motion sickness yet.

He got to the river bank without tripping, then threw the heavy armour off with a thud. His dirty shirt and trousers went to a small inland pond carved into the shore by the river. He sat in a long under shirt, feet submerged in cold water and watched as dregs and clumps of dirt filtered out from his cotton shirt and pants.

It would take a while for the clothing to dry during which he would get his needed rest. This place was as good as any for a camp site. He would make a bed up in the tangles of the tree branches, and along the shoreline he could see hoof marks of water-holing animals that ought to make for a good dinner. He heaved one big sigh and washed the fatigue and frustration from his face.

Up above, the skies had darkened to a muted blue gray. The moon hung low, a fat circle of bright new blood against the cold backdrop of the skies. He blinked. A harvest moon? Now? Was it already near autumnal equinox?

He leaned back on his haunches at the sheer size of it hanging so close to the earth. He suspected it was his new 'female night vision', for the moon seemed larger and brighter than he'd ever seen. It pulsed from the skies, a disk of luminous light that looked back at him with a secretive gaze and a smile.

... And he could almost hear a hum from somewhere, like a song that hadn't quite gotten out of the singer's throat... as if it was calling out to him...

_Come up here. I'm lonely. Come play with me. I'll kiss you and wrap you in my hearttt..._

Come to think of it, wasn't the moon supposed to harbour the body of the Juubi according to legends? Didn't Madara try to...

He never got to finish that thought. By the time his head hit dirt, Naruto was already out cold.

* * *

The carrier wagon rolled into the Joeki sawmill and river harbour at exactly midnight. Standing in his place atop the wooden water wheel, Okabe pulled the crank stopper open and directed his men to the scaffold of the derrick. A dozen logs of wood were unloaded from the wagon, followed by Chihiru and her steaming cauldron of gruel.

The moon hung over their heads; a perfect harvest moon that draped a silvery red sheen over the forest, the water cliff, and the sawmill below. It was not the honey light of day but it would still enable them to catch the autumn flash flood and push their delivery date up at least two days.

The lords of Kokkyo city would be pleased.

The men bellow him grunted, "Heehohh! Heephohh!" and pushed the logs into the derrick dai. The crank strained. The wheel turned. Leather straps wound taut around wooden logs and lifted.

Up to the side and down went one log, safely deposited into the river. Another four days and it would arrive safely at Kokkyo's harbour.

Another round of "Heehohh! Heephohh!" Bare backs glistened with sweat.

Sphlaph! Sphlaph! Sphlaph!

Okabe saw the eighteen year old Yasui veering towards Chihiru and her cauldron. He yelled from his scaffold.

"Hey, hey! Get in line! We're not finished yet!"

The boy whined. Chihiru laughed, lifted the lid, and let the wind carried the smell of hot gruel all over the wood yard. Okabe heard his own stomach growling in response.

"Alright! Alright! One more and we can have a rest."

The boys whooped and cheered rowdily. One yelled out "_Beautiful_ goddamn night to you, foreman!" and got several pats on his back for that.

Okabe heaved a sigh between helplessness and geniality. Well, they were nearly done anyway, and the boys had been working since noon break. Plus, it really was a beautiful night.

The mist hid most of the scenery but that had always been the case on this side of the Joeki range. The cold climate and the regular rain tied a belt of constant mist around this part of the mountain. But tonight wasn't so bad. Okabe could still feel his toes and his stomach ulcers were at ease and the clear moon made it that much better.

His boys 'heehohheephohh'-ed another log into the river before whooping and breaking ranks. Chihiru had taken out the bowls and was weilding her ladle like a lance at the horde of hungry boys heading to her bench.

'Beautiful goddamn night, indeed!' Okabe thought as he surveyed the now near empty warehouse and wagons. For these boys, a good bed and a full belly constituted a beautiful night. But tonight was Okabe's. In two weeks, Kokkyo would issue its checks and that meant full bellies for everyone in the woodman's village till next year.

Okabe laughed and climbed down from the scaffold to join in the raucous laughter and cheering of "Chicken meat! We got chicken meat!" He could already see his wife and daughter plump and smiling in the new dresses and winter coats he'd buy them with the checks from Kokkyo... and perhaps even a milk cow by the shed so that Mio wouldn't have to ride all the way into town for the milk, if they had enough money left. He was sure they would with the pushed-up delivery date. Yes, new dresses, winter coats, and milk that didn't cost an arm and a leg. He'd pinch his daughter's cheeks as he fed her warm cow milk.

Okabe laughed again and made haste when he saw Chihiru waving her ladle at him over the boy's heads. The moon bore down and lit his path to the smell of food and cheering.

_They had fourteen more seconds to live._

The cauldron sat in the center of a circle of sweaty backs, yells, and clamouring bowls, filled to the brim with cream-white porridge. Okabe settled down next to Chihiru, taking great caution not to disturb her seventh-month bloated belly. She handed him a bowl, curling her arm over the reach and indignant cry of Yasui – "That's got the biggest piece of chicken! Fore-old-man!".

_Eight seconds..._

Okabe laughed at the boy's antics. The others booed and whooped.

_Five seconds..._

Chihiru swirled her ladle in the now half-empty but still steaming cauldron, heaving with difficulty under the weight of her pregnancy.

_Three..._

They laughed and cracked jokes about snooty Kokkyans, then whined of works yet unfinished.

_Two..._

The moon bore down with brilliant red light.

_One..._

.

.

.

Chihiru heard it first, but not by a large margin as the others followed seconds later, perhaps not so much hearing it but feeling it in the way the air suddenly weighted down like rocks on their shoulders and congealed into a cold, viscous veil.

"What's that?" She raised her head, eyes wide, and looked back and forth between the river and the wood.

Then she found it.

A sound – _whuppwhuppwhuppwhupp_ – like the beating wings of a great beast uncurled from the other side of the river.

Okabe shivered. He pulled his coat tighter around him. An inexplicable chill slithered up his old bones. He stood up from the bench to get a better view but did it so suddenly that he knocked a clay bowl over. The porridge splattered and spilled in a mess at their feet but no one paid it any attention, not even Okabe as he wiped the burn off his hands.

They stared into the pitch dark, bewitched by the nonstop chant of strange sounds.

'Something is wrong.' A thought filtered through the drowsy veil of Okabe's mind. Strangely, the foreman was not at all alarmed. It was as though he was dreaming, a communal dream with a dozen other villagers, and thinking while doing so. He felt the touch of fear on his mind but it was the slow sleepy fear of dreams where one ran in a never-ending corridor, chased by unknown monsters.

'No one is reacting. They aren't screaming. They aren't afraid. It's strange.'

It was true. The woodsmen stood in an unnatural quiet, spilled porridge and broken bowls lay at their feet, gazes glued to the other side of the river, ears cocked to the strange sounds and waited.

'We should run...' Instincts told him, instincts born from forty years surviving the wild and five years of conscripted army service. But he didn't want to. No. Something kept him. The sound? No. More. Only then did he notice something else underneath that slow and continuous _whuppwhuppwhupp_. A voice? Humming, singing, crooning, its laughter rich and beckoning.

_Come_, it said, _comeee... to... meee..._

A series of noises tore through the forest, like thunder striking the earth. It was a sound any woodsman would recognize even in his sleep – the boom of trees falling down, leaves and branches screaming the sound of cascading tsunamis on their head – and it tugged at Okabe's mind with its familiarity.

'Quick. Somebody yell "_Timber_". Or we'll get crushed.'

But the other part of his mind was screaming back. 'I don't want to be here. Something's coming. Something big...and hungry. Run, run!'

Another sound of thunder struck the earth as; this one close enough that they could see its silhouette from the other side of the river as it fell to its death.

Okabe saw it then. A white figure emerged from the bowel of the forest, small, too small for the sheer terror that froze them to their places, yet somehow even more horrifying because of it. This was a monster far above brute force and size, that had absolutely no need for them.

More trees fell around it, towering grandfather oaks roaring into a noisy end.

'Let it be crushed,' thought Okabe, 'Let it be crushed.' Any of those trees, even the smallest would do the job. It wasn't that much taller than Chihiru, and no bigger than any of the boys employed to him.

As if it could hear him, the thing – _monster_beast_abomination_ – raised its head and looked straight at him, its shining blue eyes hypnotizing under fluttery blond hair.

_Come_, it said_, I... hungry..._

Okabe's first step landed right on half of a bowl – his own – and broke it once more into little pieces. He registered the sharp twang of pain from his feet but it was an insect bite compared to the scalding pressure that was squeezing and pulling him onward; as if someone had hooked metal wires into his mouth, nostrils, and eyes and was pulling at it, the way farmers pulled cattle to the slaughterhouse.

A wall of bobbing, swaying bare backs was in front of him, marching a slow drag towards the river, onto its bank, then into it. Their feet crunched a monotonous rhythm on the trampled grasses and pebbles. The river shone a silvery, scaly sheen, not from the water, but from fishes, small and big, carps, daces, Black Bullheads, belly up and in such huge number that they made a thick weave on the river surface.

A quiet plop and the first woodman's foot was in the water, wobbling over the jagged riverbed. Goto – Okabe realized – youngest one of the bunch, and the laziest. The boy's back muscle spasmed, over-run with sweat. The intertwining stink of fear, blood and feces. A large yellowish brown stain spread on the bottom of his pants.

'_Turn back, you fool! Turn back!_' No one heard Okabe. Not even himself.

Another joined the young woodsman in the river – Yoon. He slipped, fell, and banging his head on the bank, struggled for a second before crawling on all four, mindless of the nose-high water and the gaping hole on his skull.

A thought zipped across Okabe's head.

'_We're going to die.'_

He shuddered violently. Here? Now? Like this? With his little daughter at home, sleepily waiting for him and Chihiru?

Okabe was the last of the line. As he watched helplessly, one by one, the woodsmen headed into the river, their legs disappearing first into murky water, then waists, then shoulders among the floating dead fishes, then the top of their heads, then vanishing altogether.

A moan sounded from Okabe's right, a woman's moan. From the peripheral edge of his eyes, Okabe saw Chihiru walking the slow drag beside him, her fists clutching the wet hem of her skirt. Liquid ran down her thighs and calves. Not pee. Birth fluid. The first bloom of blood unfurled on her skirt, just below the bulge of her protruding belly, and crept down the length of her legs in one thick red line.

"Ouwhh... ouwg..." She looked at him, eyes wide and begging.

_My baby! My baby! Our baby! Do something!_

Do... do what? What could he do?

Another red line appeared beside the first one. Chihiru started crying. Her lips trembled as he stared back at her.

No. Not like this. With all the strength left in him, Okabe heaved his whole weight to the right. His body leaned like a felled tree. His legs staggered beneath, one, two steps until he was dragging in front of Chihiru, his large, forty-something years old woodworker body hiding her from view.

From the other side, the _thing_ looked at him, not angered or irritated, but amused...curious. Its blue eyes shone the fascination of a petulant child wondering what he should do with the ant under his thumb. Drop it into a frying pan and watch as it ran and danced its way above the fire? Or drown it in liquid glue?

_Don't you look at her_, he screamed at it, _don't you dare look at her._

It tilted its head in answer, as if it heard, then smiled.

Okabe knew what was coming. He could taste the salty mixture of sweat and mucus running down his face and lips. Moonlight filled the clearing with soft and glittery yellow and rose. Okabe took one last look at the saw mill and the wood lodge. He screwed his eyes shut and focused on Chihiru's quiet breathing at his back. He saw his daughter asleep on the windowsill back home, the warm fire under a steaming stew pot in the middle of the room, the new crib he made in the corner, draped over with fleece and wool.

He heard Chihiru's crying out.

He felt the pressure lift from him. For a moment he was weightless, floating in total darkness, then his head exploded in pain as it hit something. He sank down. His eyes flew open at the impact.

He saw the copper brim of the cauldron first, then Chihiru's back. She was walking away from him. Her small, white feet printed bloody footprints on the ground. A headless body walked next to her. Its hand held hers.

The world rolled. Moonlight. Roaring trees. Whipping in the air. His boys crawling up the other side of the river. Chihiru walking away from him, walking away with some other man, wearing a red wedding dress.

Finally he could open his mouth. He wanted to say something, curse, scream, but nothing came out but spurts of blood. His larynx stuck up like tree branches from the neck of the headless walker. He sank down further into the cauldron, further until the hot gruel was under his eyes, then further still...

... then nothing.

* * *

When Naruto woke, his eyes were already open.

The world came into his vision like cut-off movie frames, the type they used in old theatres nobody went to anymore, blotchy, displaced, and slatted over with grainy brown spots. The skies bled onto his eyes the color of a raining morning. A dog-eared moon slowly melted into its gray blue canvas.

A few more seconds then his mind kicked in with a question.

_What happened? ... _then_... Where am I?_

He reached for a memory – had he fallen asleep while washing his clothes? Did he fall, hit his head on something and pass out? Or was he chewed on and spat out by some sneaky wild animal? – but all he found was empty white space.

Unsure of what to do or if he was really awake, Naruto lay still and waited, floating in a vague sense of half consciousness. It was pouring, he noted when his skin faintly registered tiny cold drops. He shivered instinctively. His tongue tasted the strangely salty rain.

Then he realized he wasn't breathing.

His first reactive inhale sliced through his nostrils and lungs with all the sharp edges of a chainsaw and jerked him fully awake. He drew a second breath, thrashing wildly as his lungs swelled and his brain ebbed and pulsed with the incoming rush of air.

He had about one second to wonder why the hell was it that he was still alive before a string of chokes jerked through him. His nose ran thick, heavy liquid. Blood. Not his. Something was stuck deep in his throat and his gullet was kicking up a fit over it. He beat at his chest. A single, gnawed-on eye ball popped out from his mouth, covered in spit and bits of crusted crimson. It dropped down his chest – his naked chest – and rolled small circles on his belly, looking up at him with one dark brown pupil.

_What the...?_ He sprang up as if burnt.

_The ground_ bounced under his weight, bobbing like gelatin. His legs wobbled before his feet slipped on the fresh human entrails. He tumbled and fell. When he got up, his mind was jarring a firehouse wail. He took a step backward, back ramrod straight, feet askance like he was going to fight. He took two more. He made it all the way to the edge of the clearing. A wet lumpy tree stump cut off his exit route.

The rain poured down his head and washed the sticky membrane off his naked body. The red crust under his nails and between his toes thawed and drifted off.

He stood there for a long time and looked at the place where he had lay just minutes ago. It had felt warm and soft... _safe_. He felt the bile rise in his throat but he couldn't yet fully believe it. He'd like to think he was hallucinating, but he had seen far too much to think he'd be that lucky.

He looked down at himself to check – naked, female, bare feet, red water racing down the columns of his legs – then turned back up again.

Large black trees, not standing up but dead on the ground, walled in a round clearing of maybe half a mile wide. In the middle sat an anarchic rising of flesh – bound, wound, bent, and strung-up, protruding from the earth like a one big bird's nest made of human branches.

The rain made a pool in the center of _the Nest_, where he had snuggled up to the naked bodies and slept. Streams leaked out through the cracks and drew spider veins on the ground. Bits and pieces of human drifted with the veins: guts, hair, feeces, a tooth. The leg of a woman jutted out from the brim. Her soft female curves stood out among the brutish male muscle welded into her. She too, was stripped naked – her long, lean back facing him, half of her head missing.

Her hair drooped down to cover the gaping hole in her skull. The strands washed along the water and white-gray tissue. One strand. Two.

Naruto was glad he couldn't see her face.

The bile in the middle of his throat made an upward leap. Somehow, through the rain, he could still catch the smell and that alone raised a memory. A taste. The ghost of a taste. But for one split second, it overtook him. His tongue moved, swerved, licking the teeth and the ribbed roof of his mouth. His jaws chopped a chewing motion. Salty, water-logged, a hint of porridge and chicken, and some mud. The human meat flipped and wriggled in his stomach like cut-off gecko tails. Alive. Almost.

And then it was gone, swallowed by the roiling prequel of vomit.

He doubled down, his chest heaved heavily. He gripped his mouth and throat with his hands.

_No, no. Not now_. He didn't want to know what they looked like. He had seen the eye ball. What else was in there? Later. Later, when everything was digested, when it would look like a puddle of shit, yellow and brown.

He pinched his nose and breathed through his mouth. Two slaps to his face brought stars to his vision but at least he felt slightly better. He panted and shivered, his eyes glued to the ground. Then he turned, felt the tree trunks with his hand, jumped and ran.

He ran like a mad man. His vision tunnelled forward where he could only see a carpet of felled trees and an unobstructed sky. _The Nest _chased him, reached out to him with its tangled hands and legs, touched his back with its fingers.

_Where choo going? Where choo running to?_ It asked.

He didn't know how long he ran till his feet – the silly female feet that didn't know how to walk and run properly – caught a snag and propelled him into a freefall. He screamed as he fell, thrashing through a barbwire of brittle black branches. Then he hit the river.

The fall brought a shock to his system. He broke through the surface with one hand on his mouth.

'_Calm down. Calm down! Oh god... for fuck's sake, it's only a few more corpses, get a __**hold**__ of yourself!'_

He had seen worse. Any ordinary war veteran would have. But _/the taste/_... the taste hadn't left. It clung on his tongue, insidious as a leech.

_... blood vessels popped like baking corns under his teeth, he sucked down their content..._

Abruptly, Naruto put his hands under the water, clawed at the riverbed, and brought up a scoop of mud and moss slime. Without so much as a wince, he stuffed the mud and slime ball down his throat and swallowed in one gulp.

Not enough. He could still detect a hint of salt and copper. He brought his hands down again, came up with another ball. Still not enough. _Another!_

He gorged down handful after handful of mud until he was full to his eyeballs with it. If he vomited now, he was sure it would come out clotted black instead of brown red.

His mind was blank, not the blank of silence but the blank of white noises, of a hundred thoughts clamouring for attention at once. It was the sound of a hailstorm under a tin roof, and at this time, after seeing what he saw, it was just too much.

Naruto fumbled in his mind, found the switch, flipped it off. He heard the noises died down one by one.

_There, much better. Don't think about it now. It is useless to think about it. Focus on something else. On survival. This is no time for emotions._

He found another switch, the emotional one, the one that was screaming its head off, and shut that one up too. He had learned how to button-flip himself four years after Sakura died. It was either that or go crazy.

Then he let the harmless, rational thoughts come in.

Something happened. Surely. He didn't _/eat/_ them. Those humans. Normal. Not shinobi. Civilians. Innocents. They were dead now, as dead as could be. Something happened. _What?_ The river. He was at the river, washing his clothes, planning dinner, preparing a place to spend the night. _And then?_ He lost consciousness. The moon. The big fat moon that swallowed the skies in brilliant red and purple light. _And then?_

...

... nothing...

There was nothing in his mind in between the two points. He remembered sitting on the river bank in nothing but a flimsy white under-dress as the night approached, then the next he was waking up. It was morning – right after? Several days after? Or even longer than that? – and his bed mates looked like the output of humans through a meat grinder.

No...

He laid a hand on his belly and called up the suppressing seal. The ink surfaced on his skin, not crisp black but a fragmented brown. It was pushed near its limit – too near in fact. Below that, he could feel something bubbling, swelling, pushing on the inner walls of his body.

He drew in one long inhale. The air felt cold and heavy in his lungs.

So what was it? The Bijus? All nine of them? Some fragments of the nine-tailed fox that had somehow survived? The legendary Ten-tailed beast itself? Or something else altogether? Monster. Did chakra beasts even need to eat?

He stared at his belly, ignoring the twin swells above it. _So what the fuck are you, huh?_

He probably should get up and get out but the coolness of the river had a calming effect on him. It put a lid on frustration. The gentle lapping of the waves were almost licking away the heat of a vague but bone-deep fear.

He sat there for a long time, concentrating on breathing, in_out_in_out_, and the deep drumming rhythm of something else inside him.

_Yeah, like it's going to answer any of your questions, just gonna pop up outta the blue, wave its hand at you and say, 'Hey, buddy! Sorry for the mess. The party last night was wild, man. You shoulda been there. You shoulda seen me. All these babes, ya know. All theeeessssseeee meeeaaaatttttssss!'_

But he listened to it anyway. Silence engulfed everything, an unnatural silence for a forest – no bird chirps, no calls of the local wild life. The wind too, was still and frozen into something tangible in the air.

He sat until a grayed-out sun went up above his head. Then finally, his internal drone kicked up on itself.

'_Get up, Uzumaki_,' it said, '_You've got stuff to do. Whoever those people were, they're dead now, dead as door nails. There's 'nuff you can do for them and sitting there doesn't solve zilch. You got one big parasite in you and you dun know what it can do. So get up on your ass and start looking for a village, for their village in fact. Gotta be some place they produce those, don't it? Find the village, find the city, get a way to contact the Toads – that's still the one ticket you're allowed to have.'_

He cleaned off the caked dirt on his lips and in his mouth, gave his own head a good dunk to wash out bits of bowels still stuck there there – _can't go greet shell-shocked villagers with guts as hair accessory now can we?_ – then got up. He hesitated at the flaking seal on his body. It looked like it would collapse if he so much as blew a kage bunshin, but fixing it, and probably turning its suppression up at its highest meant no chakra moulding, meant no jutsu at all.

He shifted on his feet, uneasy at the thought of defanging himself, but if he left it like this, there would be no telling if or when he'd go on monster mode again. He persisted for another second, but he knew his choice was made.

He sighed as he felt the effect of the seal on him. It was like the full-body model of a dental brace. Then he looked up and eyed the vague outline of a man-made structure far upstream.

A harbour?

* * *

It turned out that it was both a harbour and a sawmill, an old-style upstream port where cut timbers were prepared and carried downstream to their destination – a save on cost, labour, and time. There was a head in the cauldron in the middle of the wood yard and happily swimming in it was a family of maggots. Outside of the sawmill was a dirt road with traces of cart-wheel prints still on it.

Naruto found a bundle of worker happi coats on one of the benches, still wet from the morning rain. He pulled out the cleanest looking one and put it on. The hem of the man-sized coat ended at his mid-thighs, just about enough decency to venture into a village. He'd have to steal something else when he got nearer.

He followed the road.

The first corpse turned up about half an hour into his walking, intertwined with another behind it. Men, clothed, in different states of decomposition, one had a wood hook buried into the other's neck. He stopped only long enough to register the faint twang of chakra traces, _his_ chakra traces. Another corpse turned up in the next five minutes, woman, half submerged in a water ditch, eyes already picked off by carrion birds.

He felt dread pool like liquid ice in the pit of his stomach.

Then the road opened up, the village he was looking for came into view; a charred black thing, swathed in smoke and flying embers.

He saw the bodies first. It was hard not to with the way they peppered the ground, some already burnt to a crisp. It wasn't a large village – just a dozen houses and one communal hall, and seeing how the sawmill was connected directly here, probably a settlement for the worker's family – a Woodsmen Ville. He nudged a broken spade with his foot.

Burnt to the ground. What happened here?

Naruto was wading in a carpet of soot and sludge when he heard a sound. A human's cry. A child's cry. Where? He jumped over the wreckage of a fallen beam, trying to locate the source of the sound. He found it, strangely enough, coming from a house in the outer perimeter of the village. It was a small, one room cottage, made of more thatch than wood. At one point, it must have been lighted up with fire, just like the other houses, but the rain and its detachment from the main cluster of the village had saved it midway. It was tottering on its post, barely standing up.

From the doorway, he saw the child in the middle of the room, a boy no older than eight sitting next to a face-down corpse in a bloody pool, his hands around himself, and rocking to the beat of his own hiccuping. The roof beam above groaned. Half of it was eaten by the fire, and the other half by time and rain. It was going to give out.

"Hey..." The boy kept his head down as if he didn't hear. A strange wailing emitted from him. Naruto tried again. "Hey, you need to get out!" Still no reaction. And the roof was popping spider web cracks.

_God damn it! _He eyed the roof once before jumping right in. He landed next to the child, finally startling him out of his stupor, wove his hands around him and, with another bound, jumped out. Something snapped behind him. The house groaned – that was all it could take – and collapsed.

"Jeez... hey, you okay?" He set the boy on his feet. Stupid question. What sort of kid would be okay after seeing his whole village burned itself to death? "Was that your... your mom?" He knelt down on one knee and started checking the boy for any serious wounds. He took care to speak in a soft, almost whispery voice. _Don't go Hokage... or even ninja on him. God knows the kid doesn't need that_. He couldn't remember the last time he was so close to a child before, and he sure as hell couldn't remember how to deal... no... treat... them the way they were supposed to be treated. They didn't exactly grow those on the battlefield. No sir! No child soldier for us sir! At least that was one thing he was sure he did better than his predecessor. He didn't push twelve years old kids on the front line and watch them get butchered and fried by _them bigger boys_.

The boy shook in his hands. Finally, he looked up at Naruto. His eyes were swollen under messy bangs of dirty blond hair. He mumbled something, then held out his hands.

Naruto blinked, almost took a step back. In the boy's arms was a mess of red and slime, a slab of flesh that looked like what they threw away at the meat market. Then the meat opened its mouth, showing tiny rows of white teeth, and wailed.

_The fuck!_ He jumped at its wailing. It wasn't the boy he heard since the beginning, it was the... he eyed the umbilical cord trailing behind. _**That**_ was the thing that snapped when he jumped.

A newborn... from a dead woman.

"P... please" Said the boy, its brother.

What?

"Please... she hasn't... hasn't..." The boy was staring with his tennis-ball eyes, the wailing babe held out in his hands. Naruto followed the boy's gaze, landing right on...

Oh...

"Look, kid... uh..." Naruto pulled his coat tighter around him, hiding his lolling breast from view. "I'm not..." Not what? Woman? Good luck explaining **that** to an eight year old child.

He held his arms around himself, suddenly feeling very ridiculous but also very aware of the way the boy's eyes were still fastened to his chest. The boy took a step forward, as if he was afraid that Naruto might run away, and kept looking at him with that starved dog expression. Naruto was very tempted to take a step back. In fact, he wanted to take several, turned his back, and hightailed out of this place, needed direction be damned. But something held him.

Inadvertently, he glanced back at the house, or what was left of it. The mother was dead.

"Listen, I don't have... I'm not..." He tried again, and failed horribly. The wailing babe was now a ripe purple color, its skin wrinkling around its unopened eyes and its gaping mouth. It was very clear that it wasn't going to survive if not given the proper attention.

Oh god...

"... Alright... alright... give it here..." He wheezed out at last.

_What'cha you doing Naruto? What'cha you doing? You really don't mean to do it? Do ya? Do ya?_

No. He didn't know what he was going to do. He didn't know a damn thing.

Naruto received the babe in shaky arms and felt like somebody had torn him in two and was setting the two parts to a dogfight. He sank to his knees, then on his butt on the ground. The brother sank with him, watching attentively. He suppressed a shudder as the newborn squirmed. It had stopped crying and was now sniffing at him. One tiny hand touched the flat center of his chest, then the other. He held it awkwardly, almost away, but the babe had an in-built radar for warmth and protection... for the sound of his heartbeat.

He fought against the urge to throw it away and watch it die. From this point, it didn't look like a baby. It looked like tumour... or a dog with the way it was sniffing for the scent of milk and maternal sweat, a hairless dog dripping blood and birth fluid on him.

_This is not my body_, he thought to himself, as if to reaffirm_, This is not my body. It's just a temporary vessel, a tool... to use... like a kunai. So use it already..._

It was easy to think that way, but not so easy to sit there and not react to the urgent pawing on his chest. The newborn found his breast at last and it bit right in. He winced at the twinge of pain. There was nothing there. The newborn released him, sniffed pitifully, and started wailing again.

"See... there's nothing there. I never had a baby. There's nothing for your... uh..." He told the brother, then stopped short at the way the boy was looking at him. For a moment, he felt pinned under the boy's gaze.

He swallowed.

There was a way. There were several ways actually. Galactagogue, a substance that promoted lactation in human. Hormone manipulation by hitting certain chakra tenketsu. Even simple prolonged kneading used for difficult new moms or older women, or couples with certain sexual practices. He knew how, had never done it, but probably could without much trouble.

_Don't mean you have to do it, right, Naruto?_

He almost nodded along with the thought. It would be very easy, rational and clinically clean cut even, to administer one of those on himself, feed the babe, save it from obvious death, then get on with his business. No harm done. No fusses. No loss time sitting on his butt in a 'who'll blink first' competition with a child. But... something in him stirred, some primal part that couldn't bear the thought of letting himself be touched again by that monstrous newborn.

_Look at it, Naruto. Look at all those purple spots. Look at the blood on the navel and the uncut umbilical cord. Look at its feet._

He looked_. _

_Infection. It's going to die anyway. Whether you're going to do it or not. What's another one, huh, Naruto? Like you haven't killed a hundred others since you were fifteen. What's another one?_

He drew in one breath, lifted the baby "Here... I can't do it." He almost looked at the boy.

_Don't do it, Naruto. Don't look up. Once you look up, he'll nail you with that face again. They always do, Naruto. I don't know about how you go on denying all this stuff. But it's real. This body is real and I've felt it, Naruto. I felt the servant's hands on my body and I felt the scratches and the hollow where it wasn't before, and I damn well felt that little sucker's teeth on my nipples. I don't know how you felt and I don't give a damn about your 'use it like a kunai' thingamabob, but this is my body. This. Is. My. Body. This is my __**fucking**__ body._

Little hands closed around his and around the baby and pulled. "... Please..." He made the mistake of looking up... perhaps he had wanted to look up. He was eye to eye with the boy and suddenly he was blinded with light.

_Now he was in a different place with a different boy looking up at him._

"_Hey, pa!" called the boy, the sun shone behind him, bleaching his black hair into gold orange._

"_Hey, kiddo," he replied._

"_Can we play ninja, please?" The 'please' stretched out like bubblegum with a wet raspberry at the end of it. The child clung to his leg, waving his toy shuriken. He looked just like his mom. Naruto laughed and was about to comply._

"_Hokage-sama," the Anbu at his back prodded, "Meeting in fifteen."_

"_... Sorry, kiddo, maybe next time."_

Then the light ended and he was back in the clearing, sitting in front of a bruise-faced boy. His mind was strangely blank, as if there was nothing there. Funny, it was like the nameless boy knew where all of his flips and buttons lay, knew exactly how to shut them off. Fwip, there goes instinct. Fwip, sensation. Fwip, ah, my bad, I fucked up your house. Now it's full dark, no stars. He was running barely on command, on auto-pilot. He dropped the baby to its brother.

"One moment."

He peeled the coat collar off to reveal bare shoulders. Two points under the shoulder blade, three on the stomach, one in the back of the throat. He suddenly felt bloated. He started kneading just for extra measure.

When he took the babe the second time, there was no more wailing.

He was thankful that right now, everything he felt was dulled into muted tickles on his senses. He heard screams too, in the back of his mind, but he paid it no attention. Instead he turned and regarded the boy. He rocked the babe gently as he started a conversation with its brother.

"So..." No. No chatting about the village or dead parents here. What else could he ask? "... What's your name?"

"... Hanzo..." And there they were, a thin strip visible in the swollen eyes, the reverse color irises. Dark on the outside, light on the inside.

"... Oh... nice name..."

"... T... thank you?"

"... So... do you like salamanders?"

The boy looked at him as if he'd grown a second head, and only after a long pause did he reply.

"... No..." then as an afterthought, "... They taste bad. Fishes are better."

He laughed a little bit, mostly on reflex, partly to calm the boy. First Hashirama Senju, now Salamander Hanzo. And what the hell was somebody like Hanzo doing in this Woodville? Shouldn't he be somewhere with a clan of his own? All questions Naruto had no answers to. All questions he was sure a certain toad would be squeaking out... whether he wanted to or not. But one thing at a time; for now, he had a baby and a kiddy-future-ninja legend to care for. The thought scared him. It had been so long since he was responsible for anyone else besides himself. But it passed. Then he sent Hanzo to find him water, made a fire, and started cleaning the baby.

* * *

Another child appeared around noon time, a girl, bare foot, and wearing a checker blanket over her head like it would protect her from the world. The shameless howling of her stomach let Naruto know she was drawn out by the smell of food. The girl child stood by the peg leg of a burnt down house, tried her best not to look like she was spying on them, and failing spectacularly. From her not so innocuous glances, he deduced she was trying to think up a plan to steal the food.

He would have smiled if she didn't look so pitiful. _This one_, he thought, _would not make a good recon nin_. He kept his eyes at the crackling fire in front of him and pretended that he didn't see her. Above the fire was a stewing hotpot of dried fish, cat's-ears, and rice, very much to Hanzo's relief, they really weren't going to have salamanders for meal after all. He picked up a bowl, filled it and put it in her direction. Then he went back to what he was doing before, rocking the sleeping baby and watching Hanzo wolfing down the stew by himself.

He didn't have to wait long. About two minutes later, he heard her footsteps. Smart girl. He said nothing, did not even look. In front of him, Hanzo shifted uneasily.

He studied her as she ate. Brown hair, brown eyes. She wore what looked like a sleeping dress with one snagged corner. The blanket hung from her head like a tent. When she was finished, she looked him in the eye and muttered a quiet, "Thank you."

"What's your name?"

"... Hinamori... daughter of Okabe, son of..." he tuned out the rest. The name called up something from his mind.

"Hi-na-mo-ri" He tested the sound on his tongue. No, that wasn't right. That wasn't how she was called. "Hinamo... _mo_... mio..." the last one almost like the sound a cat might make. They had called her that because it sounded almost like 'Mo' and because she loved milk.

"How... how did you..." The girl stammered and jolted him out of his thought. Yes. How did he know that? He paused for one second. He had several guesses. Unimportant. Disturbing. He decided to sidetrack the child.

"How old are you?"

"... Um... ten... no... eleven."

Eleven. That was younger than him when he made genin. He laid a hand on Hinamori's shoulders, then in the gentlest voice he could make.

"Mo, will you tell me what happened here?"

The girl stilled under his hand, trembled. Then she began to talk between bursts of sobs.

Apparently, this place really was called Woodsmen Ville. Mo had lived here since she was born and so did Hanzo. Five days ago, her parents and the main workers had stayed late to finish a shipment to the big city. When they didn't come back the next morning, the village had sent a boy to find out if there was trouble. The boy hadn't come back, neither did several next ones they sent. Finally, they sent a team up. One came back, but he was strange. All... jittery and stuff. And he spoke in this ugly guttural voice. A few days passed and then suddenly every adult in the village was... strange. Then last night, the killing started. Mo had barred the door and hid in her parent's bedroom. She had stayed under the bed until she heard everything go quiet and had only come out when she couldn't bear the hunger anymore.

And that was the end of her story.

So... for five days Naruto was out cold and someone else had rode in his current body. The rest wasn't hard to patch up from the sobbing girl's narration. What he needed to know was what to do now with the three orphans he suddenly found himself with.

"... What's your family name?" he asked absentmindedly, intending to keep the flow of the conversation. He did not know that question was a bomb.

"... Family name? You have... you have a family name?" Mo stuttered, her eyes wide.

"I knew it!" Hanzo sprang up from his seat, "You're a ninja!"

Naruto blinked at the sudden accusation. Mo sobbed louder.

"... No... don't talk about them. Mama said ninja are ba... bad people." Then she looked Naruto over with her wide brown eyes. "You're a princess, are you? Nobles have surnames too. Royal, nobles, samurai... and... and ninja. But you're not bad. You're very pretty. You must be a princess."

"Princesses don't wear that." Hanzo pointed at Naruto's ratted worker's coat. "My father is a ninja, and he's not bad. My ma said he loved her. He'll come and take me away one day."

"You... you don't have a father. Nobody has seen him."

"Do too."

"You're lying."

"I'm not. Look at this." The boy was in Mo's face, showing off his eyes. "I got this from my father. Nobody here has this."

"Shut up! I'm telling you to shut up! Your father left your mother. You and your sister have no father now. He's a bad person. All ninja are bad!" Mo threw down her hand as if in command.

Hanzo froze at her statement. Something cracked in the boy's expression, then he spoke, and this time it was not just childish quarrelling in his voice anymore.

"I. Don't. Have. To. Listen. To You. My ma is not your family's servant anymore. What the hell do you know? What the hell do you know?" The boy was screaming now. "At least ninja are strong. They don't hide under their beds and cry when they hear their ma and pa die!"

"Alright. That's enough." Naruto put himself between the two of them, one hand still holding the baby, the other hand on Hanzo's shoulders, hoping to calm the boy down. "Mo, don't talk about other people's parents like that. And Hanzo..." He stopped short as he saw the boy's face, seven, not eight years old. The boy looked young... but not young. Overlaid on the baby fat of childhood was the ghost of death, of having witnessed it. Steel forged halfway, forged too early, neither here nor there.

"Teach me," said Hanzo, "Teach me... how to be a ninja. I wanna be strong. I wanna be like my dad. When I grow up I'm going to be just like him. Then I'll go and kill the one who did this to us. I swear it!"

For a few heartbeats, the clearing they sat in was quiet, not a pip heard. Then _'Babe' _woke up and started crying. Naruto restarted his rhythmic rocking. He glanced between Hanzo and Mo, then stepped to the side. Unlike Hanzo, Mo's face was full of fear, but there was also something else, like she was seeing something on Naruto for the first time in her life... and though it looked nasty, she wanted it. She wanted it desperately.

"I'll think about it." He gave his answer at last, then he walked out on them.

He walked listlessly pass the ruined house and the burned corpses, a half-dead afternoon sun above his head. He kept near the trees or the beams in case his woman's legs and balance might fail him again. A small fish pond and a farmer's field was in the back of the village, he allowed himself one rare moment of release – bending down by the pond and throwing up everything in his stomach: the stew, the mud, the suspicious looking bits.

That felt slightly better... well, lighter anyhow. He couldn't describe what he was feeling now, a familiar sensation but one that was hard to comprehend. Something strange. Something. Something.

There was no answer in his head but a droning bomp... bomp... bomp.

He had felt the same way when he and Sakura lay wrapped up in each other like two pieces of the same rope in the aftermath of the battle of Cam Lach... as if they were fresh from making love, but then Shikamaru just had to walk by and pull Sakura's dead body off him, asking "_Did she give it to you?" "Give what?" "Her brain. We ain't gonna get another medic like that." "... Fuck you, Nara. I don't give a shit anymore..." "Well, you should." _Then Shikamaru pulled him up, and he had to remind himself that it was not proper for the Hokage to break his main strategic advisor's nose... especially not after losing half of his force in the biggest trap hole on this side of the universe. _"Her upgrade of Chiyo of the Sand's Kiso Tensei worked brilliantly. Not just the transfer of life energy, but also transfer of knowledge and partial chakra. She gave it all to you. You're the new head medic now, lord Hokage."_ But Naruto wasn't listening to him. He wasn't even looking at Shikamaru. Naruto was staring at the dead Sakura. She hung like a doll on Shikamaru's shoulder, limp, cold. Then he said. _"I hate you, you bitch. You lied to me. You promised... you promised we're gonna be together forreeveeeeeerrr–"_

He went back when the sun had resuscitated him somewhat, only to find two faces staring at him from opposite sides of the clearing. Hanzo sat on one, nursing a black eye and mumbling under his breath. Mo didn't look much worse for wear except that she was crying and blowing her nose again, and her checker blanket was lying in tatters on the ground. Naruto sighed.

They were young – too young maybe, but they were also running out of time.

"Alright," he said at last, "I'll teach you. I'll teach both of you."

But before that teaching, there were other things to be done.

* * *

They salvaged whatever was left from the ruin in the late afternoon. Food, clothes, equipments, little knick-knacks. The communal hall, the only building still standing in the entire village, was christened their new headquarters. By early evening, Naruto had already started rolling the corpses into a pile and covering them with a hemp sheet.

They retreated back to the communal hall by night. The building, which was used for village meetings and public celebrations, proved too big, too hollow, and therefore, too scary for the children, but at least it was better than the outdoor alternative... with the rolled up corpses.

Naruto made a fire in the barbecue pit in the middle of the room and roasted them all a big dinner. They ate, chatted. There was little to talk about between three shell-shocked individuals but they tried anyway. At least the sound would fill up the ghostly space somewhat. Before the he put them to sleep, Hanzo and Mo both demanded a song. Because he didn't know any nursery songs, Naruto sang them a love song instead. And because he couldn't remember the beginning, he went straight into the middle.

The song went like this.

"Jesus was a sailor. When he walked upon the water, he spent a long time watching from his loneeelyyy wooden tower. And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him, he said 'All men will be sailors then untiiilll the sea shall free them...'"

That had prompted a row of dive-bomb questioning. 'What is Jesus?' 'I don't know. A forgotten god, I think.' 'Where's his people now?' 'Dead? Lost?' 'Is he a ninja?' 'Can ninja walk on water?' 'Why was he lonely?' 'I don't know. Please, let's just sleep.'

Naruto woke up in the middle of the night to the feel of two little bodies pressing on him from both sides. He halted his reflexive reaction to gut both of the intruders in time. Under the faint moonlight, he saw the children's eyes glistening. They were scared of ghosts, and he was the only living one there.

That was no good. He wasn't used to sleeping next to anybody for a long time now... let alone squished together like this. He'd have to put a cold rein on his well-honed killer reflex every single time they so much as twitched. Then he felt little hands cling to his waist, and two warm heads worming their way into the space under his armpits.

Awwwwww...oh! Oh damn. Well... maybe just this one time, but just once, alright?

The next morning, 'Babe' woke him up by peeing on him. And when the zombie sun crawled up the east side of the skies, Naruto already had something for the kids to chew on and was on his own in the village yard while digging up grave holes. Because he could no longer use his chakra – in particular, no spamming shadow clones to make instant slaves – the job was long and frustrating.

He loaded each body into a shallow hole and filled them in with earth. He had made a dozen planks the day before but the majority of them never got a name on. Mo and Hanzo could only recognize a few, and he didn't want them to look too long. When it came to Hanzo's mother, he sat the boy to a side and had a long talk with him. The plank, under which rested the bits and pieces Naruto had manage to wrestle from under the cabin wreckage, was engraved with these lines.

_Mom_

_Your son loves you._

_Baby lives._

He contemplated going back to the place where he had woken up and take care of the corpses there too but couldn't remember the way. That, and they didn't have much more time either. The weather was getting colder. It was near the end of autumn. When winter came, they'd be boxed into this little dead town and, except for Naruto, the rest would probably end up dead little brownies too.

Another night squished together. Another morning woken up by 'Babe', this time not pee but a pile of baby poo on Naruto's chest that sent Hanzo and Mo shooting away from him like rocket launchers the moment their noses awoke.

Their departure was right on that morning.

The destination was Kokkyo city, which – according to Mo – was the only one that had always been there, and was the biggest city on earth. Or at least, the biggest city she had ever seen. It had walls that reached into the skies and river gates to greet merchants from all over. It was the only port city between Fire and Rain. Why, it was even rumoured to have a samurai lord who could shape sunlight into swords of different shapes. There was a person who knew her parents there, an innkeeper who would surely let them stay.

Naruto digested this with a screen in his mind. A militaristic border city controlled by chakra-using samurai – most likely a hot zone then. Good, that meant information and that his band of refugees wouldn't stick out like sore thumbs amongst the native Kokkians. He'd get the things he needed there and straighten out the situation with the three orphans. Though he hadn't said anything to them, he knew for sure that he couldn't exactly go on his revenge quest with three little kids in tow.

By mid-morning, they were fed, packed, and standing at the village gate. The children were outfitted in coats and walking boots. Naruto himself had steered clear of woman travelling clothes despite Mo's protests. He was plainly goosebumped out of the idea. It had felt like peeling off the skin of dead women and slipping into them. Naruto had worn men's clothes instead even though the smallest ones they could find were still slightly too big for him.

So here they were, standing in the cold, misty morning. Naruto presented 'Babe' to her brother.

"We need a name for her."

"I'm bad with names. Think up one."

"Uh... uh... Hi... Hime?"

"Oh, come on. Are you kidding me?"

Hanzo and Mo had a brief fight before settling for a name that weren't too tacky, too dry, too girly, or too Hanzo-y.

Nozomi. Hope. What they needed for their journey ahead.

Naruto held the newly named Nozomi to his chest. The newborn's body was soft and malleable as fresh dough in his hands, and her skin smelt like new butter and melted caramel. Just how exactly she went from thrown-away rotten meat to this was something he couldn't understand even though he had witnessed every second of it. According to Hanzo, it was from all the milk she had been guzzling down, which was ridiculous because Naruto was sure he did not, in any way, smell like that.

Then the sun was up above their heads, wearing a scarf made of white mist and green tree tops. They said goodbye to Woodsmen Ville, exited the gate and ventured into the dark woods.

**End chapter 4**

**

* * *

**

Part 2: Uchiha will comprise of three sub-parts.

I. Eva Luna (the one we're in right now): dealing with Naruto's situation as the name implied and his seemlingly invaded sense of self. The ending to this sub-part will shed light on a lot of technical questions of the story

II. Kiiroi Kami: will be mainly in Kokkyo city with Naruto joining Kokkyo's army and waging a war to get information on the Uchiha clan.

III. The demon that ate its own child (tentatively named): Naruto infiltrating the Uchiha clan, meeting Madara at last. The ending sequence will be the situation with Hashirama and the Senju clan and will probably be almost as shocking as the patricide sequence.

Each of these sub-parts will be around the length of all of Part 1: Senju itself.

* * *

Three concept arts this time: Naruto and 'the remain' (abstract), the scene right after Hashirama shishkabobed his father, and the concept Naruto for the last part of the story.

I really wanted to do a better job at describing the world Naruto is in now (especially the scene when he just exited the Senju clan and the morning after) but I think that's something that neither words nor drawn pictures can quite create. Not the same vastness and majesty.

But if you want to get a feel for this world, there's a clip on youtube that evoked the feeling I'm going after quite well. It's a piece of classical music. Search for 'Perfume story of a murderer: Streets of Paris'.

* * *

Very late update this time. The main reason is I was hospitalized for one whole month and had to have a surgery to remove a tumor in my stomach, so I lost quite a lot of time and drive for the story. It's funny. I wrote about Naruto's condition in the first three chapters and then a month later I had to experience almost the exact same thing. I realized I didn't even get a tenth of what it was like in real life. I found that my writing was too shallow to describe something like that. I didn't know jackshit.

But anyway, I'm glad that something like that happened. Now I can say I have field experience. That feeling, knowing that you can die even when you're only in your 20s, or what it felt like when you want to pee but can't do it on your own and you have to lift your naked butt and wait for them to put the pan underneath you to _'go'_, then wait again for them to clean your 'Netherland' with a paper tower while you watch on (Bad time to flirt with the good-looking nurse. I'm speaking from experience here); or that feeling when it's so painful that you'd willingly get addicted to the pain-killer needle just so you can have a twenty minute sleep.

It changed my writing, especially at the latter half of this chapter, hopefully for the better, hopefully with more depth and truth now.

Anyway, I'm back on my feet and hopefully the next chapter of _Tis Femina_ won't take too long to get out.

Hope you enjoyed that.

Sythe


	5. Chapter 5: Little Girl Blue

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

Beta: Michelle T., Kevin C.

Part 2: Uchiha

**I. Eva Luna**

**Chapter 5:** **Little Girl Blue**

A knight and a lady

Went riding one day

Far into the forest,

Away, away.

'Fair knight' said the lady

'I pray, have a care.

This forest is evil –

Beware, beware!'

- Knight and Lady, Anon -

* * *

"You sure it's a right?"

"I'm sure."

This sentence was spoken through two hiccups and the rasp of a runny nose. The girl's eyes were red and watery.

Naruto looked down at Mo with barely suppressed exasperation. She had been crying ever since they left, all morning, then all noon.

"Hanzo, can you get up that tree and have a look?"

The boy nodded, then clambered up a tree like a monkey.

"There's nothing up here. It's all mist." Hanzo shouted from the tree top.

"I told you it's a right." Sniff. " I've been to Kokkyo before." Sob. "It's all on the right. No left."

"Alright. We'll take the right turn."

His band of refugees stood at the point where the road split into two. One would take them to Kokkyo in a week. The other would take them... somewhere. Between these two turns, there were no road sign, no chipped wood boards that said 'Kokkyo' and 'Some other place―don't take it.'

The only mark was a pile of rocks shaped like a pyramid by the road. Not exactly the most illuminating clue. Curses and damnation that Naruto hadn't managed to ferret out a map from the ruin of Woodsmen Ville.

Too bad that his only guide was an eleven year old girl. Despite his best intentions, Naruto was nervous about trusting her stinted direction. Mo had gone to Kokkyo only twice, and that was three years ago.

They managed to steal another two hours before daylight ended. And for their first night out of town and only the second day since tragedy, the gloom of the dead Woodsmen Ville hung like a shroud over their camp.

Naruto eyed the wilting boy and girl over the camp fire.

"So... you want to be a ninja?"

That got him the attention he wanted.

"We'll start with this." He turned his wrist, twirling a kitchen knife between his fingers. He could feel the children's disappointment right away. They had been waiting for something flashy, something that screamed 'ninja' the moment it walked on stage.

Typical civilian misconception.

Still, he went on, first, showing them the proper hold, how to grip, how to not hurt themselves, then, how to aim and throw. He let them try the knife on for size. It was made of scrap metal, rusty, and unwieldy even in his hands. It would have problems gnawing though a chicken's neck let alone serve as a proper weapon.

He watched the children fumble with it, feel it, and confirm its utter uselessness with their own hands. Only until their disappointment turned to dejection, did he pick up the discarded knife.

"Watch." He sent it flying cleanly through a thick tree branch over their head.

"Your first lesson." He put one finger under Hanzo's jaw and closed it with a snap. "Ninja make the best of what they have."

Apparently, that was all it took to renew a seven years old's enthusiasm. Hanzo practiced with the knife until his palms were red and raw, and even then, the boy held on to it, like it was a promise of what the future held. Someone to kill. Someone to repay pain to.

"That's good. That's the spirit." He rubbed Hanzo's head.

The boy was what he imagined, some potential and a lot of determination. Salamander Hanzo had only come to renown when he was at middle-age, old for a ninja, possessing a strength not from sheer overwhelming talent but from patience, hard work, and experience. That was okay. That worked too.

_Grow strong. One day, you might even be able to take me on and finish me. _When that day came, Naruto wouldn't mind.

The wild card, on the other hand, was Mo.

She hadn't touched any of the knives, merely watched from the sidelines. At first, he'd thought, typical girls. Sakura and Ino at that age hadn't been interested in learning the ninja arts either. But then came the questions.

"What is it like... being a ninja?"

"Well..." He started. What is it like, indeed.

"My ma and pa said ninja do all sort of _things_." The word 'things' was pronounced with a drag. "They kill... people that they never even met, and burn villages, and... and take women..." She answered Hanzo's glare with gusto. "Do you do that too?"

"No, I don't." Not without some damn good reason. But he supposed that was what ninja of this time did. Mere swords for hire. Thugs even.

"We're not different from normal people. We have children too, and we love them. The children go to schools. Sometimes, we have festivals, big ones... and sometimes we sit like this..." He gestured at their camp. "... and just have a good time. Hard to imagine?"

Mo nodded. The thoughts jarred in her little head. She had always thought of ninja as demon-like. They must be, or else how could they do the things she heard? Killing... and burning... and... what for? No good people would ever do that. People like her family, honest folks, who were dead now.

But from what this strange lady was saying, they sounded so... normal!

"That's okay." Naruto opened his arms to her, beckoning. "It takes time."

Mo inched nearer, shy. This person was a ninja!

"Do you also have... children?"

Naruto blinked, surprised by the suddenly personal question.

"I... I do. One. A boy." Maybe it was the guilt, maybe the situation they found themselves in, or even Mo herself―just a child, harmless―but Naruto found himself talking things he'd never let out to anyone. "He'd be your age now." Even quiet Hanzo perked up beside him. A boy. A little ninja boy with a ninja parent, maybe even two of them, just like Hanzo.

"Where is he?"

"Gone. Left me."

"Why? Doesn't he love you?"

Kids. They were smart enough to ask questions, but not enough so to know when to stop. Naruto opened his arms again. "It's late. Go to sleep." This time, Mo complied.

Come morning, Naruto's decision was made. He'd keep Hanzo... and discard Mo.

* * *

Somehow, this decision made things easier.

He had thought long and hard on what to do with the three tag-along kids. Children were fine, children like the Konohamaru corps. He liked them, and he was responsible for the loss of their family, but he was also a ninja with a mission that he would complete _at any cost_.

One week. That was how much time he would give them, and absolutely no more.

It would take exactly one week to reach Kokkyo on foot. The moment they were there, Mo would go to her relatives and Hanzo and his sister to the Toad clan.

The children's thoughts of him were plain to see.

Hanzo adored him simply because Naruto was the only link to his missing father. Naruto was a ninja. Naruto didn't see him as a freak.

Mo was conflicted and confused. She found the idea that ninja can be good, normal people hard to swallow. She was curious but that curiosity wouldn't last long. Ninja life wasn't for her.

Nozomi... was too young and too fragile to be handled by someone as inexperienced as Naruto.

It would be the best choice for everyone. Mo would get her family. Hanzo and his sister would have a place that accepted and cared for them. And Naruto would be able to keep an eye on Hanzo and see how he should deal with the boy's contribution to the future.

Once again, Naruto had changed the path of history, but he had never intended to keep history as it was to begin with.

Perhaps he would keep Hanzo out of Rain altogether, perhaps teach the boy a different way of thinking and indirectly steer the future Rain in a different direction. He'd have the time for that decision later. Madara awaited.

One week. That was the deadline.

Yet, despite Naruto's wish, this deadline would be breached.

They passed three more splits on the road, each with the same rock formation. It was on the forth split that the promised one week ended.

"We're not at Kokkyo." Naruto was standing ankle deep in mud and rain water when he said this, a bawling Nozomi deep inside his rain coat.

The sun was setting over the horizon. The seventh day was ending, and there was nothing in sight except for trees and more trees.

"We... we could be near." Mo stuttered.

Not possible. The road showed no sign of widening, lowering, or crisscrossing with other roads.

Woodsmen Ville was a valley at the middle of a mountain range. A city as big as Kokkyo could only be built on flat terrain. If they were anywhere near, then the road should have been descending the mountain height. More adjacent roads should have appeared if the border city really was as big a trade center as he was told.

None of that had happened.

"Why won't you believe me? My father took me! It was all on right turns. Maybe just one more turn!"

That was when Hanzo found something.

"Look at this!" The boy was inspecting small indents on a tree trunk. "That's my foot mark! I climbed up this tree!"

They were right back where they started, the first road split near Woodsmen Ville. For one week, they had been walking in a circle.

Mo looked at Hanzo like she was going to put a knife into him.

* * *

That night, Mo slept alone.

Naruto said nothing as the girl scooted away from him, Hanzo, and Nozomi, only handing her an extra coat and patting her head.

Naruto was not angry. He was anxious.

There was something very wrong going on here.

In their week long journey, they had turned right at every junction, only to arrive back here _from the left side_. Mo's direction was not wrong. The road itself was curved into a perfect circle, something no normal road would do. A road went from point A to point B. If the two points are the same, as was this case, then there was no need for one at all.

In other words, this was not a road. This was a deliberate trap.

Naruto was shocked to a standstill the moment he made this conclusion.

The idea itself. A trap maze... spanning hundreds of miles in the middle of a forest. It was so ridiculous he had almost scratched it off his mind... but then, he started noticing other oddities.

The trees, for once. They were short, scrawny even compared to the part of the forest where the sawmill was located. These trees here were obviously younger. And there was a certain pattern where they stood... as if they had not grown by themselves in nature but... planted... by human hands.

Then, there was the location of Woodsmen Ville. Perhaps he was acting paranoid, but now that he had the time to slow down and inspect their surrounding, did he notice the way the hill town seemed to creep into the depth of the mountain itself. A perfect hiding place... but also a perfect prison. Before he had taken up Mo's directions, Naruto had climbed up to the village's highest point–the watch tower–to scout. That had resulted in nothing.

Even the name of the village itself, Woodsmen Ville. Normal, generic―maybe too generic. It was like the village was wearing a big sign on its head that said. "I'm normal! Trust me!"

Combined, the clues were pointing to some very uncomfortable truth.

He needed to confirm this.

.

.

.

It felt a little like defeat to walk through the burned gate of the now dead town. The orphans stood outside, looking in at the place that was once their home. The first sight to greet them was the row of grave markers.

_Mom_

_Your son loves you_

_Baby lives_

"Stay here." He instructed them before going in. There was one place he needed to check.

He found the plantation field by the fish pond, untouched by the fire. Last time he was here, he was too distraught to pay it any attention, but now... the second he got pass several rows of corns in the outer edge, he saw them.

Poppies.

Bulb-shape flowers swayed in the wind. Miles wide.

His question was answered. Woodsmen Ville was no lumberjack's town. Woodsmen Ville was the cover for a morphine plantation.

* * *

It was only until he went back to the orphans that the weight of discovery took hold of him. He stood at the gate of the village, looking out. Their surrounding was exactly as it was one week ago, but at the same time... not.

The mountain range embraced them, so tall they looked like they were eating up the skies, a flower of rocks and jagged edges raging against the heavens. Trees rose from the ground, a legion of them, their thin, brittle branches like bony fingers. And then... there was the mist, the everlasting mist that came and went with every rain, wedded to the mountains like lovers, never leaving the other. Together, they put a shroud over the road. Nothing less than a ninety degree and twelve-hundred feet high bird's eye view would be able to scout out the scope of the maze.

"So... where do we go now?" Hanzo stared at him over a sleeping Nozomi's head, looking small and lost among the grave markers.

Yes, where do we go now?

Either a dead town where starvation was the only outcome or the trap... which spanned hundreds of miles. If they were lucky, they might be able to decipher the structure of the maze before either their strength or their food ran out... but if not...

"We'll go..." Naruto had his hands on Mo and Hanzo's shoulders, feeling the tremble, feeling their small bones and soft flesh. "... back to the road."

There was simply no turning back. The only way was forward.

* * *

It took about three days for Naruto to come to the realization that he had sorely underestimated the complexity of the trap maze.

4 junctions. 4 right turns. And the road wound itself back to the beginning again. It must be an ellipse of some sort, an Ouroboros of the ground. The biggest challenge was to realize that they were walking in a maze, then the rest, though not easy, should be doable even to a ragtag group of wet and miserable orphans. As long as they marked every junction and every turn passed, they should be able to make out the one correct exit.

They took the right turn at the first junction, then left, left. Then the third day brought the fourth junction too early, which on the other route would have led them back to the start, but on this one produced a fifth junction. Then sixth. Seventh.

And then it became apparent that Naruto had been naive to think it a simple ellipse.

It was a spiral. It was several of them, an untold number of them within each other, interlacing, crossing left and right, endlessly weaving their own secret code. The configuration of the maze had such an extreme complexity that it transcended itself into simplicity. Spirals. Just spirals, nothing fancy. Who would have thought?

But that still wasn't the most dangerous thing. The maze's greatest weapon was not its frightening sophistication, but the way it tied circles around their heart and tightened in like a hangman's noose.

In its core, this maze was a psychological weapon.

For days, they trudged on without rest, without a goal, never knowing if they were going to make it. He could see the uncertainty killing the children slowly, eating the light from their eyes and the bounce from their steps. Every junction that turned up unmarked was another taunt.

'Why are you still walking? Aren't you tired? Let your feet rest. Lay down and sleep. It will be peaceful. I'll take _gooood_ care of you.'

To battle the maze's corroding effect, he sang to the children. He told them stories. He made them toys from branches, and taught them a game called 'Hop the rocks'. But Naruto himself was crumbling.

He started questioning his earlier decision in the Senju territory: to wait until he could find a city.

God damn. Why the hell had he done that? Why hadn't he just spammed a million shadow clones to keep himself spiffy when he still could? Or maybe just bulldozed over the Toad clan's gate? What were a few angry toads compared to the future of the ninja world?

Against all reason, he had decided to play it safe instead. And look where it had landed him―in the middle of nowhere, leg-tied by three weepy kids, his first priority mission in jeopardy.

And that was when Naruto froze.

Play it safe?

When had he ever played it safe?

Wasn't he Naruto Uzumaki? The boy who jumped head-first into battle without even half a plan to stand on?

Play it safe? Wasn't that a little... Sakura-like? Woman-like?

Then he remembered his brain, the not-mine brain, the one that was chock-full of female hormones.

A few weeks ago Naruto had discovered he could no longer trust his body. At that moment, he made a second discovery.

He could no longer trust his mind either.

* * *

It happened sometime in the second week.

Mid-day, but it was almost as dark as early evening. The rain had stopped three hours ago, but the road was still made of sludge.

"I... I can't walk anymore." Mo said, then she stopped and plopped down in the mud. Beside Naruto, Hanzo muttered under his breath, "Princess."

"Come on, Mo. A bit more, then we will rest. I'll carry you."

"No! I don't want to!" The girl sobbed wetly. "Where are we going anyway? Nowhere! I wanna go home!"

She stood up, threw her pack at Naruto's feet, and started running the other way. Naruto opened his mouth, about to call her back, but at that exact moment he heard a sound that froze his insides.

Growls.

Shit!

A dozen feet from him, Mo stopped. She had heard it too.

From the depth of the forest, ice gray eyes stared at them. Wolves. A whole pack.

"Mo. Don't move."

With incredibly slow movement, he slipped his hand into his coat, fingering the knife inside. He crouched, and stared back at the eyes, trying to draw their attention to him.

A bark. Then three things happened at once. Mo screamed. The wolves lunged at her. Naruto leaped forward.

The wolf's jaws were inches away from Mo's throat when it snapped shut around Naruto's arm. He pivoted on one foot and flung it to a tree. One down. In the same movement, he sliced the knife in an arc. Blood rained down on his head. Three.

"HANZO!" The boy jerked awake, then jumped and climbed up the tree next to him.

Naruto yanked on Mo's coat and threw her away, then he held his wounded arm around the now awake and shrieking Nozomi. He brandished his knife at the rest of the wolves. Nine of them, baring their bone white fang, hungry and furious.

Instead of worry, Naruto felt a new emotion swelled in him. Exhilaration. His blood was pumping with adrenaline. He bare his teeth back at them, grinning savagely.

"Come on. Come on, you little shits! I _so_ need this anyway! Come 'ere! Mama's gonna **gut** you all!"

The next ten minutes was a whirlwind of joy joy joy _mad joy_. Naruto laughed and laughed and laughed and danced among the yelping wolves, relishing in the familiar rush of a good fight. His body flowed beautifully in the air, all power and sinewy grace. It felt incredible. He felt like he had suddenly gotten his old body back, except better. Everything disappeared around him, the trees, the skies, the road. All the worries, and frustration, and pressures that had been building up for weeks now suddenly evaporated.

In one long sublime moment, Naruto spun in a vast white space to the wild beat of his heart, weightless, free.

He was like a lost child who had just found home again. _Home_. The smell of blood. The weight of the knife in his hand, how it whistled in the air, how it sang to him a mother's lullaby. The electrifying current of adrenaline that surged through his body, unlocking its muscles, its hidden strength. The world was a cyclone of bright colors around him, a jingling carousel of sharp edges and pretty things.

Forget the maze. Forget the orphans. Forget Madara. Forget everything. He could do this forever. He could stay here and dance in this glistening netherworld, drink its heady ecstasy until he was so full of it he would die. This world was too beautiful. He didn't want to go back to the real world, back to the awkward female body, back to the wailing baggage of annoying children. _No. Not ever._

Then it stopped.

Abruptly and without any warning, it stopped.

Reality slammed back so fast it left him staggering. Naruto stood in the clearing and breathed with both his mouth and nose. The wolves lay at his feet in ribbons of fur and guts. The last one of them had huffed its last breath minutes ago.

A few feet from the carnage were the wide-eyed orphans. Hanzo slid down from the tree trunk he was hanging on, staring at Naruto with a mixture of awe and fear. Nozomi had gone quiet, a warm unmoving bundle tied against his chest, as if she too could sense that something had happened. And Hinamori...

Oookay. This is awkward.

Naruto shook his head, trying to kick his mind back to place. He wiped the blood off his face with one hand, then walked in slow, long strides forward. He picked up two pieces of dried sugar roots from his discarded backpack on the way.

"Here," he offered one to Hanzo, "The sugar will take the edge of the shock off."

He approached Mo with all the subtlety and gentleness he could muster. He must be a sight to the civilian girl, dripping with blood and wolf bits, and unmistakably non-civilian.

"You're... you're a ninja." Mo looked at him as though she'd just seen him for the first time. Whispers and old wives tales by the fire ran through her head. They told her things, warned her about the ninja, about their inhuman brutality, their killing, and their...

"Yes, I am." Naruto offered Mo the last piece of sugar roots. She took it, put it in her mouth, and chewed on it. Her young face was rife with thoughts, her eyes never leaving Naruto, afraid that he was going to pounce on her any moment now.

Naruto sighed. Well, he knew this was going to happen. It was only a matter of time. There was no point in side-stepping it. Naruto knew who he was, and though it wasn't pretty, it was still a part of him.

He found a patch of dry grass by the road and sat down facing the orphans. This was going to take some explaining to do. But just how was he going to go about it? He pondered on it for a few minutes, then held up the knife he was still holding.

"Last night, I made you dinner with this thing." He turned it mid-air, letting the children see its rusted back, its weathered blade, even the bits of wolf left in its nicks. "It's the same knife I used on those wolves... to protect you both" Then he drew the knife back.

"That's what being a ninja is like. We kill, yes. But we can also protect. It's an individual choice."

Hanzo nodded solemnly, scrunching his freckle-dusted nose in concentration. But he was only seven. Naruto wondered how much of that he actually understood.

"But, you..." Mo started, looking up and down between her fisted hands and Naruto's face.

"Go on."

"You... you screamed, that you were going to gut them all. And you looked..." The girl floundered for words. She didn't need to. He understood perfectly what she meant. War hadn't left him the same. It left no one the same.

"Well, Hinamori. I've been doing this for a long time. I started when I was as young as him." He rubbed Hanzo's head, eliciting a peal of laughter from the boy. "When you've been on the job for as long as I have, you get a little... funny... in your head. Think of it as a quirk."

"I think you sounded really funny," said Hanzo, meaning a completely different kind of funny.

"Of course you do. You two are just alike." Mo muttered. The statement itself was innocent, but there was something in the girl's voice, something full of thorns and hooks. "I don't want to be a ninja." She declared.

"Well, I don't want you to be either! Spoilt princess!" Hanzo retorted.

"That's enough, Hanzo. Mo―" but Naruto was a bit too late. In a flutter of curly brown hair and flapping gabardine, Mo was on her feet.

"Don't you _dare_ talk to me like that! You servant!"

"Take that back! I'm not!"

"Yes, you are! If _she_..." Mo pointed a finger at Naruto. "... didn't come, you were just going to be the coolie of the village! Like your mother, the whore! If _she_ didn't come, none of this would have happened!"

Then she turned on Naruto.

"And just who are _you_ anyway? You turned up out of nowhere and this happened! We've never had any visitors before. Maybe _you_ did it!"

That was the last straw.

With incredible ferociousness for a seven year old, Hanzo launched himself at the screaming girl. The knife hit the ground. Naruto closed his hand around the scruff of Hanzo's coat seconds before the boy could do any further damage.

"Hanzo!" But even as he shouted this, his eyes were on Mo. The girl stared at him, her face pale and bloodless, just realizing what she had done. All of a sudden, the differences between them were obvious.

Mo sobbed once, turned her back, and ran into the forest.

* * *

Naruto found a clean pond nearby where he washed off the blood and taught Hanzo how to strip, skin, and salvage meat and fur from the dead wolves. Winter was coming. The animals were going into hibernation. Their little ragtag group would need all the food they can get.

When he settled Nozomi into a branch and rag cradle and stood up, Hanzo turned to him.

"You're going after her."

"Yeah." No question as to who "her" was. The events had happened too fast. He had felt a touch of annoyance at first, but when all was said and done, he was still the adult here and Mo the little kid.

"You should just let her go. She wants to go back to that dead town. She thinks she's happy there."

"Hanzo..."

The boy looked at him in the eye, and right there, Naruto saw it, the future Salamander Hanzo in him, full of cold-hearted distrust and bitter resentment.

"We can't trust her. She's not like us. She's one of them! Let her go." Then Hanzo gripped his hand. "You're mine now."

Something in that statement froze Naruto momentarily―a sort of want that indicated a lifetime of starvation. Just what had happened in that village? But he let it pass. He ran his hand through the boy's hair, blond, just like his. Moments like this made Naruto want to give up, made him want to lie down on the road and dream about a pink haired woman and another child who had the biggest laugh he'd ever heard. And never wake up again.

But he kept on going.

"Hanzo, there's a lot more to being a ninja than I can teach you. But you know what? The most important thing is even the strongest of us needs his own team. They catch you when you fall... and we all fall. One day or another."

He found Mo after five minutes of tracking through the path of crushed foliage and busted branches she left behind. When he saw her, the orphan girl was sitting in a tree hollow and picking at clumps of rot with a stick.

He knocked on the tree trunk above the hollow first before he talked.

"Hungry yet?"

Mo stiffened, then looked up at him. The little spitfire hours ago had fled and now Mo was just a child again, afraid and unsure.

"Do I have to apologize?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

"That was very mean."

Mo turned up then, and what Naruto saw in her face frightened him. Young children had such overwhelming emotional openness that one felt invaded merely by talking to them. Their eyes hid nothing and there was no shame in the countless shades and curves of their expression. Happiness. Sadness. Despair. Jealousy. Rage. All fearlessly and blatantly displayed.

A few weeks with these unrestrained children made him wish he could order them to shut off the wet stuff, suit up, and concentrate on getting the hell out of here. Damn shame he couldn't do that, not to a seven year-old moper and an eleven year-old cry-baby anyway.

Without any warning, the girl reached out and took his right hand. She turned it up and down, side to side, looking hard for that sign that said 'this is the hand of a ninja, a killer's hand.' Then she held her own up. Mo's was a child's hand, small palm, chubby fingers, yet already rough with work calluses and peppered with red needle scars. The nails short and caked with dirt. Somehow, it looked strange next to Naruto's soft, white hand.

"I was going to be a seamstress." The girl mumbled. "I had a fish bone and a thread kit. Practiced for two years. Every morning, five to seven, before working with everyone on the field. I was going to make them proud. But they're all gone now." She sobbed once, loud and wet, and looked at Naruto as if he held her answers. "I don't know what to do. What do I do? Where do I go? I don't know how to live alone."

She opened and closed her small hands, opened and closed. The needle scars blinked like red stars on a brown veiny sky, fervently calling for happiness already passed, running away from the unknown future.

'Mo' Hinamori, eleven years old, homeless, and, for all intents and purposes, without a future.

It took a while for Naruto to finally decide on how he should deal with Mo. He patted her wet cheeks dry and picked her up from the tree hollow. He ignored his shaking hands and the memory of her dead mother—long lean back, one leg jutting out—among the naked bodies.

He told the child the one thing she wanted to hear, that one sentence that everyone relied on when they didn't know the real answer, or were not brave enough to look truth in the face.

"Everything's going to be alright."

Dried leaves crackled under the sole of his shoes like jaws and teeth snapping shut. This maze was a beast, and it was about to swallow them whole. They still had a chance—that, he knew—but that chance was a quickly closing window.

Once winter came, once the snow landed, once the animals fled, that would be the end. Zip. Nuh-uh. Game over. He needed to get out of here fast.

When he got back to camp, Hanzo turned to him with a grimace that stayed there for exactly ten seconds. Then, "Wha... what's that?" The boy looked him up and down, eyes wide and mouth drawn.

At about the same time, Naruto felt something hot and wet run down the length of his legs and eat through the fabric of his pants. Mo, who had slid off him long ago, turned right, took one look, and squeaked.

Naruto didn't pay her much attention. He didn't look down. He knew what he would see. Blood, a lot of it. And none of the type he was familiar with either.

* * *

It took about five minutes, no more, no less, for Mo to tie a grass-stuffed shitaobi on him. The experience felt more like a five hour session in a locked and loaded steam room. Naruto stood still between a bush and a tree, stark naked. He endured it silently.

Mo chatted non-stop as she worked her magic, weaving Nozomi's cotton diaper in loops from his thigh to his hip, over his backside, over the other thigh, down. "It's called a horse saddle. It will slip if you run, so don't. Pull this when you go to the bush. I still can't believe you never had..." The words spilled from her mouth with gusto and absolute authority, almost giddily. She was the expert here, and out of all the crazy things that had happened these past weeks, this she could make sense out of. This she could understand, could _deal_. In this lurid dream of ninja and dead villages and roads that were not roads, it was the one normal thing, the stuff that good girls from decent, hard-working families did. Hanzo could never in a million years do this. This was _hers_. The girl couldn't help the satisfied smile blooming on her face so she hid it with more chatters on how to deal with back pains and which brew would help with the nausea.

Naruto wished she would just shut the hell up.

The moment Mo tugged the last knot tight, he sprang from his spot, slipped into his shirt, and took off without looking back. Mo ran after him, working her short legs to keep up with his angry strides.

He felt the surge of hot, red panic when she reached for him. Neon images flickered on and off in his brain, a busy eight-lane kaleidoscope of sensations, the wet, fearful gasps of a child, wide brown eyes, the crunch of soft larynx and trachea bones crushed too easily in his un-ninja-like hands. He wished she would just shut the hell up up and bring her girlish giggles and menstruation brew to the other room. Already he could smell a very distinct scent as the blood gathered between his legs. The dampened cotton brushed the walls of his inner thighs as he walked.

Too much. The heat swallowed him.

Mo's finger fluttered near his hand, hot and heavy and smelling faintly of washed blood. He wished she would just shutupshutupshutup, or he would shUt heR uP himself...

Then the panic passed and left him in cold sweat. He fisted his hands and forced Mo to hang on to his wrist instead. He couldn't bear _touching_ her right now. And like that, he dragged the child back to camp.

When he got back, Hanzo was rocking a bawling Nozomi absentmindedly by the fire. A pot of wolf stew boiled to a froth above blades of flame, untouched and forgotten. With one hand, Naruto pulled the collar of his shirt down, baring the alien curves underneath. His other hand reached for the howling baby. Nozomi was dishing out the mother-lode of headache and the faster she got what she wanted―her dinner―the faster she would leave him alone.

He could feel himself bursting at the seams. He just wanted to get this over with. Call it a day, drop dead, wake up tomorrow and leave the happenings of last night behind on the road.

But that wasn't to be. He was two steps away when Hanzo jerked awake. The moment the boy saw him, he slingshot backward so violently that his head hit the tree trunk behind him with a thunk. He clutched his sister to his chest and stared silently at Naruto.

Comprehension took only one second.

"Hanzo?" The boy held on to his sister even tighter. His small back pushed flat against the tree and away from Naruto. His gaze swept up and down, dotting on the exposed collarbone, the creamy expanse of female flesh framed by a flimsy, flop-side cotton v-neck, the belted waist and hips, then on the smudges of dried blood on the ankles.

Naruto's hand held still in the air between them like one big question mark, set to explode. Mo shuffled past them, huffing in a clearly irritated voice.

"What're you doing, idiot? Hasn't your mother ever told you about women's monthlies? Boys! Squeamish about that kind of stuff, huh?"

"You shut up!" The boy snapped back. His eyes darted between Mo and Naruto, drawing the connection for the first time.

"Hanzo, please..." Naruto tried again, shoving as much gentleness as he could into his voice. The boy flinched away from him. "Your sister..."

In the end, it was the ear-piercing volume of Nozomi's cries that forced Hanzo into giving up his furious sister to Naruto. Now unburdened, the orphaned boy scooted to the far side of the camp, away from the woman and the spitting Mo.

Something was jumping in Hanzo's stomach, several somethings, little invisible frogs that made a mess of his insides. Hanzo pushed his hands into the ground, grabbed, clawed, and rolled the mud into balls in his palms. He ignored Mo's disgusted sputters as he watched the woman.

She sat on the other side of camp, opposite of him. Her hair glittered in the fire light, the prettiest things he had ever seen, probably the prettiest thing Mo had ever seen too. The thought brought him a smile because for once, she did not belong to Mo. She was ninja, like Hanzo, like Hanzo's dad. So she belonged to Hanzo.

But the smile was short-lived. The frogs in Hanzo's belly ate it, snapped it up like flies on a wet autumn day. For a boy like Hanzo, seven years old and lacking of a father since birth, mother was... the biggest thing that ever lived. The boss. God. The skies. The one that told him to brush his teeth, clean his hands, eat his greens. All of them combined. But that didn't necessarily mean he knew she was female, like the girls running around in his village. Mothers just were. Mothers existed before them. Mothers made the laws of the universe. Hanzo had never seen any girls do mother's stuffs before, like breast-feeding, or giving birth. Mo didn't even have the stuffs to breast-feed.

To suddenly tell him that the big and all powerful mother was somehow related to the hissing, spitting, cootie-infested gremlin sitting on the other side of camp... that would need some adjustment time before it could slot it into Hanzo's logic-defying grid of logic.

The biggest thing Hanzo was struggling with, however, was a strange feeling, a deep, guttural revulsion that rose from unknown depth pointing and snarling at everything, the woman specifically. It was this that Hanzo didn't know how to deal with. Hanzo liked the woman. He liked her hair. He liked her face. He liked her blue blue eyes, a strange color, just like his. Sometimes, when he slept, he brought the softness of her body and her warm tingly scent with him into his subconscious where something was growing, something infantile, faceless, voiceless, but it was growing nonetheless. If he could, Hanzo wanted to follow her forever.

Hanzo looked over at them, the woman, his sister, Mo, all of them together, comfortably enveloped and accepted in this... thing... that he didn't have... this 'female' thing. That beast rose in him, that intrinsic fear of the other that all human had. Hanzo felt the sting of betrayal. It was like Mo was stealing the woman from him, stealing his ninja destiny from him, stealing his identity...

"Hanzo." The woman called and patted the place next to her. Bed time. Hanzo inched forward, drawn by the promise of comfort and belonging. He stopped dead half-way. The frogs in his belly wouldn't let go.

Just what did this all mean? Was the woman his or not? Was she like him? Was she different? Hanzo was tempted to peek up her skirt and check for himself.

Did he like her or did he hate her?

Then he stopped all of a sudden. All these questions, the frogs, the beast, everything, the woman brought this on.

"Hanzo." He heard her call again, and even his childish mind recognized the exhaustion in her voice. The feelings rose up in him, warred with each other. The like, the fear, the hate. Hanzo settled down where he was standing. He was afraid to go too near her now. He didn't know what he would do.

* * *

Naruto rocked Nozomi to sleep as he waited out the night. His body moved periodically, mechanically. The baby was long asleep and so was the girl beside him. Hanzo slept alone on the other side of camp, a reversal of the night when they had discovered they were walking a road trap and Mo had been in his place then.

But Naruto noticed none of this. Right now, Naruto was in a state of petrification. He kept his eyes upward to where the bony canopy looked like the inside of a human's ribcage, gigantic, looming, and dripping with fluid. Only a sliver of silvery light came through, but even that was enough to make him shake in fear.

_Was it a full moon? Was it a full moon up there?_

The memory of last full moon was a red dot in his mind. No need to wait for winter or for their food to run out.

Here. Now.

Any seconds the moon may appear above his head, a glorious full moon singing its dark, sweet song to a monster inside him.

Was this it? The end?

Seconds passed in silence. The only thing he heard was the wet rush of his own breath. Minutes. Hours. Still nothing.

He couldn't, for his own life, remember how long it had been since last full moon. A five day coma. Yes. Two days in the village. What else? One week of wasted time. What _else_? Unending days on an unending road. Time blurred. A loop made of time and space and human weakness.

_Sons of bitches!_

In the silence of the forest, the sounds inside him were thunderous. Sounds of things beating, squishing, gurgling. The flesh cogs turned in a well-oiled female machine. The blood escaped him in clots. He felt its jelly-like exit, warm between his legs, and stiffly cold in the cotton binding.

The staccato of his own irregular heart beat. Burbump burbump burbump.

_Something was going to happen. Tonight._

More and more, his thoughts were coming back to the decisions that had landed him here.

Foolish. Ignorant.

He'd chosen to dismiss it as a farce, hadn't even looked at the symptoms all the way back at the Senju fortress, or he'd have known.

The hormones running through the veins of this body were the equivalent of psychoactive drugs. Haloperidol, thioridazine, quinuclidinyl benzilate, the loads. A few drops of Amobarbital would make a man spill his gut, another few drops would make him murder his family in cold blood.

His body was jacked up to its own twenty-four seven drug factory, pumping its own version of chemical lobotomizer non-stop, and all the decisions he had made had been under its influence.

The question came back to him. Why a woman? As if a woman's form could wreak more destruction than the form of a monster. Why?

Now more than ever, he longed for the light of the sun, a sun that would end the night and kill the moon, a sun that would deliver him from this darkness.

.

.

.

He knew it was a dream the moment it started. Somehow, that made it worse.

He stood in front of a kitchen sink, washing the blood off his hand. A dead person stood behind him. The sharp floral scent of her skin made him want to cry.

"Hey baby." Sakura Uzumaki nudged him to aside and released her basketful of apples into the sink. Her laughter tickled the soft of his neck. Her fingers squeezed his left butt cheek. "Late to your own son's birthday party. He's pissed off. Somebody's going to get spanked, and it's sure not gonna be me."

Naruto turned to her, face slack, caught between extremes of joy and despair. "I did?"

"You sure did." She nodded toward the oscillator clock on the wall, not a frog but a pink Hello Kitty with a dangling tail, because Sakura liked pink things, and in the Uzumaki household, mama-Uzumaki equalled queen of the universe. The clock read 5:45 PM. The paper calendar next to it read December 5th, 3xxx.

The door and the window shone super nova white. Sounds took on that blurry quality of dreams. He heard the birds, the dogs, and the jingles of a bicycle approaching, then the door slammed in its shutter and in ran a child.

'_Hikaru.' _His heart imploded in his ribcage.

"Hikaru!" Sakura yelled. "Don't run into the house with your shoes on!"

But the child was too drunk on his own high to pay his mama any attention. Instead, he turned to Naruto, wearing that trademark Uzumaki shit-eating grin.

"Old man! Hang out your butt now so I can kick it!"

His son's laughter boomed in the space between his eardrums and Naruto thought_. I'm losing it._ Then he thought. _Alright, give me the three orphan brats, just don't leave me with him. Please. He'll eat me alive._

He slumped down on the kitchen counter and watched the bantering between mother and child, unsure as to where he fit into this picture. Hikaru took Sakura's hand and pulled her running out the door. Sunlight chased after their heels.

Naruto was left alone in a house that was suddenly too big and too small all at once. He hesitated at the threshold.

Did he go after them? Or did he stay behind?

_Do female brains dream wishful dreams? Do they dream wonderful and impossible things?_

The twenty-six year old Rokudaime would stay and barricade the house. He was battle-hardened, jaded, wary of too good promises. The genin-age Naruto Uzumaki, on the other hand, would zip right through the door. Twelve year old Naruto would have gone anywhere for his Sakura-chan.

Slowly, almost drunkenly, he thumbed his way to the open door, but before he could get close, vines grew from the checker-tiled floor beneath and roped him in place. He turned, expecting Hashirama Senju, but what he saw was a masked visage. Mismatched eyes looked back at him, one Sharingan, one Rinnegan.

He roared Madara's name. Even time and dream couldn't dull the edge off his hatred.

"Atta boy!" Madara sauntered close, but not close enough for his clawing hands. "How's the party?"

That was when the dream stopped. This was no dream, he realized. This was the past. This was memory unearthed from the cellar of his mind, unwanted, ugly, full of guilt. He began to fight against the restraint, suddenly full of fear. He should have gotten out of the house.

"You know, I'm real sorry for what I did the other day." A three-pronged kunai dangled from Madara's hand, gift-wrapped in pink and purple polka-dot ribbon."Blowing up ten thousand people, my bad. So I'm bringing a truce gift today... for birthday boy out there."

Naruto's eyes followed the swinging kunai. That's for his son, he thought. That's for his _boy_. Like fuck he'd let Madara close to him.

"But you see, I'm real busy right now so you'll have to do it for me. I want you to give this to him. Well, I've been in your place before so I know. Every father wants the best for his son, even ninja fathers. And I'm going to help you with that. I want you to give him the best thing you could ever give. I want you to give him..."

The Sharingan spun. The three-pronged kunai spun.

"... Ever-lasting peace."

A bomb detonated somewhere in Naruto's head and vaporized all his rational thoughts. He lunged at Madara, teeth bared, snarling, full-on animal under the weight of rage. Madara stood just beyond his reach, chuckling humorously.

"Dear, dear. Look what you've done to yourself."

The house melted like candle-wax around them. Red apples and pink Hello Kitty Clock sluiced and juiced and joined the fleeing rivulets of liquidized brick and mortar. The dream structure of the ground wobbled, shifted. Checker-tile floor gave ground to a flood of blood. He found himself paddling wildly to keep afloat. A water-walking Madara looked down at him.

"Look what you've done to yourself," Madara repeated.

The cry of a newborn tore into open space, flashing ripples across red water.

* * *

Naruto jerked awake in time with the rumble of thunder faraway, his torso wet with sweat, the apex of his legs wet and reeking of something else. He cursed and fumbled for the back of the babe sleeping on top of him. Nozomi was asleep despite the softly rolling thunder. So were the other children. It would take a while yet for the nightly rain to wake and propel them into a run for higher ground.

He crawled one finger between his thighs, came up streaking with female discharges. He groaned.

What did that girl say? Change after every four hours, wasn't it?

He rolled out from his bed pad and onto the soppy mud ground of the forest. The pond last evening came into view after much stumbling around. He pulled the knee-length shirt―a stain-resistant maroon color―he wore to sleep up and over his head, then he tore the cotton binding off and threw them into heaps on the dirt.

The innards of the shitaobi spilled out from the force of the throw, a mess of green brown grass, dark red mucus, and worm-like black clots. The sight of it made him giggle. That same batch of square-shaped twenty-by-twenty kerchiefs was servicing him and Nozomi both.

Baby's shit. Woman's shit. Same kind of nasty shit.

The surface of the pond boasted slats of floating ice. He slipped right into its depth. The burn of sub-zero degree cold greeted him like an old lover. Now this was something easy to deal with, mere physical pain. His brain flopped inside his skull. _Get it over with_, it said.

It was when he was reaching out for the water surface that he noticed it, the second person in the pond.

The first heartbeat froze his body in defensive reaction, his hands one inch away from the other set of hands. Second, third, fourth beats slow-mo-ed into minutes as he took _her_ in fully. A nymph-like creature lay in the water, on a bed of greased rocks and reflected moonlight, stark naked saved for the reeds in her hair. The wind blew like a woman's breath by his ears. '_Hi,'_ she said.

He shuddered, half in shock, half in revulsion.

_It's me_. The thought sounded unreal in his head. _It's my reflection._

And it was. The pond water was mirror clear, dead still unlike the moving river water. Gallons worth of wolf blood this evening had sunk down and carpeted the bottom in thick layers of grease, leaving several metres of surface area in crystal condition. A big, fat moon shone yellow light on that liquid mirror, perfect saved for the mouse's bite in one corner, and under that moon was the reflection of what he had become.

He moved his left hand. She moved her right. He leaned down. She bent toward him, her titties swung forward like plump peaches.

"Hey, bitch." He mocked, almost laughing.

"Hey, bitch." She replied. He felt a chill as she looked at him, her blue eyes glittering in a way that would razor-slit any man in two. Her voice was soft, not high but soft, and somewhat throaty, not at all like the voice that had escaped his mouth.

It's an echo. He told himself. Sounds distorted by water, nothing more. But that sounded like bullshit even to him. He felt that funny switch in his head flipping open.

"News flash, Naruto, read the lines." He wasn't talking. She was. Her pretty pink lips were moving rapidly. Her voice blared by his ears. "Man gets out of bed in the middle of the night, strips naked and stands in a duck pond, waiting for his ass and his ding-a-ling to freeze off. Does that sound familiar? Yeah? It's what crazies do, darling."

That made him laugh.

"Fuck, I don't believe it. You're talking!"

"'Course we do, baby. Crazy people's reflections talk to them all the time."

"I'm being told off by my reflection, wow." He remarked casually, already far past the threshold of sanity. "So what do you want, my deep dark subconscious given form?"

"I want to talk. I want to talk about the truth."

A cheesy B-movie lightning flashed in the water background behind her. Above ground, the rain poured on his head, the air slick with tingles of thunder.

"Oh..." He turned, ready to go back and pack his bags.

"Why are you running, baby? Where ya gonna run to?"

"Why the fuck did god give women their mouths?" He muttered as he waded back to shore, his eyes on his discarded clothes. Her voice chased him.

"You just can't deal with it, can you? You're so afraid you can't even look at me."

Naruto froze mid-step.

"How long do you think you can run? Another day? Two? Until the moon full out and you have those children for dinner?"

He turned back, looked down. The water was the gate to a second world. In it, they, he, she, were a two-headed beast, their bodies joined at their legs.

"This is all just in my mind, isn't it? If I punch myself real hard, you're going to shut up, right?" He asked absentmindedly. Now that he was looking at her, really looking at her, he could see why the Senju had behaved so strangely around her, like children who had never seen candies before. Now the silence of the crowd every time Hashirama Senju carried her through them made sense. Now he could hear the screams and howls under that quiet. Now he knew what that meant.

Same blue eyes. Same blonde hair. Set of whiskers marks. But someone had taken those, added extra spices, shook, stirred, put the mixture on an anvil and beat at it until it hardened into diamond. A woman-shaped machine designed to draw out a primordial hunger that preceded even human. He was surprised that the less disciplined of the Senju hadn't torn her apart. Then again, Hashirama had been around every day for the first few weeks. He supposed he owed the boy one more thing.

"The thing is, the Great Toad Sage bullshitted you, Naruto."

He blinked. She blinked. But she didn't shut up.

"You ate up all the shits he fed you and you didn't think. The thing is, you're dead, Naruto."

Oh...

"You didn't survive. You should know that. You designed the seal yourself. The End. Boom-bada-boom. Capiche?"

"...You're fucking with me. What made it through then?" He didn't like the way she smiled, like how mothers sometimes smiled at their dun-headed babies. A for asshole. B for bastard. Geddit? Geddit, you little twat?

"A ghost." She dropped the word as if it was the most inconsequential thing in the world. "A stowaway on my great ship. I ate him on the way here but he's giving me indigestion. He thinks he's calling the shots. He thinks he's the boss, but that's only because I'm asleep. He's playing naughty with my body and calling me dir-dir-dir-dir-tyyyy. He thinks he's the superhero. He thinks he's going to save the world. I bet he dunt know that, huh? He dunt know shit. He can't do shit. Because this. Is. My. Body! And yoooouuuuuu... trespasser..."

Her voice had a funny effect on him, sort of like acidic rain drops. Her water melted his body like pan fire melted virgin butter. His skin peeled off first, then his muscles. His arteries popped off in whole-sale bundles. His internal organs dropped off his bone frame one by one, then the bones itself. Until finally, only a heart remained. He could see it very clearly even if his eyeballs were rolling figure eight on the ground, a great human heart flopping, beating –barbump barbump barbump – amidst its fellow human jelly.

Naruto's fist hit her face in a watery explosion. She broke into a million pieces. The second punch hit the pond bed and gouged two tonnes of mud into the air, but that didn't do naught to him. He kept on pummelling her into oblivion, screaming at the top of his voice. "Don't fuck with me you bitch! You bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!"

.

.

.

He lost track of time after that. A red haze swallowed him. He felt like dreaming, except that his hands hurt with every impact and his body was burning, feverish. He only came back into awareness when a sound lanced through his ear drums with all the power of a piercing 140 decibels. The cry of baby.

Three things happened at once. Naruto whipped back. Mo clapped her hand over Nozomi's mouth. Mo and Hanzo both took a step back, slipped in the mud and fell flat on their butts.

The first few seconds, he simply stared at the children, uncomprehending. They struggled in the mud but kept their eyes glued to him. Every tiny bone in their bodies vibrated with fear.

Naruto blinked once, then finally took in his surroundings. The pond was no more. He'd pulverized it. He held up his hands and saw that the fingers were in the process of growing back, their white bones still uncovered.

"What... what..." Mo stuttered.

"What was I doing?" She nodded so hard her snot flew everywhere.

Good question. What the heck was he doing? Losing it. Breaking it. Going nutter. Having a heart-to-heart conversation with himself. Hallucinating out of his ass. Too many choices, none of which sounded half sane under the scrutiny of other people. He felt dumb all of sudden, dumb, hollow, and dead tired. The fleeing anger left nothing but dry air in his husk of a body.

"I was angry." He offered his explanation for the disappearance of the pond. Beside Mo, Hanzo's face cycled through four ranges of color, from white to gray to beet-root purple to clotted-blood red. The boy looked him up and down, eyes stopping at his chest and crotch. A spark of anger sputtered a short life in Naruto's belly.

Getting your first sex-ed huh, boy. Careful where you look or I will...

He stopped the thought right there.

"Go pack your bags." He ordered. "We'll move soon."

The children fled, too eager to get away. Left alone, Naruto crawled up what was left of shore and collapsed on grass-covered ground. Despair lay down beside him. What am I doing? He thought. Where am I going? What am I going to do with those children? What am I going to do with myself?

Great coils of raincloud covered the moon and spared him the sight of the ticking clock. How much more time did he have? One day? Two? The blades of grass under him felt like teeth. The monster in his body was pushing it to end game. Naruto laughed and swallowed a mouthful of rain. He hadn't felt this lost and miserable in a long time. At least at war, he knew where he stood.

He lay there for maybe ten minutes before getting up. Another day, the long walk ahead, the road awaited. When he got back to camp, another surprise greeted him.

Camp was empty. The orphans were gone.

.

.

.

His first thought after the shock was: Wolves. But one quick look dispelled it. No claw marks, no sign of struggle, no children bits on the ground. Then came the obvious conclusion.

They ran away.

Tiny foot prints, already being erased by the pelting rain, heading out to the road confirmed his suspicion. By the time he came to this, he wasn't too surprised. He would have done the same. He cursed once, and was set on giving chase to his runaways when a thought popped in his mind.

Why?

He jerked to a halt. Why? Why what? Children ran away. Adult went after them, brought them back, set them straight. It was a formula as old as there were naughty children who didn't know what was good for them and parents who were in charge of them. It would be an idiot to ask why.

But they weren't his children, were they?

That sudden realization was the breaking of the dam. Thoughts strewn into his head, alien, un-Naruto-like thoughts, but each and every one of them cool, calm, and rational, as if issued from a machine.

Abandon them. Get what you need. Go. If you're on your own you can make it out. You have a chance.

"W... wait..."

Necessary cruelty. Mission is higher priority. Madara. Assassinate. _Revenge_.

"... but..."

No chance of survival otherwise. Full moon in two days. _They will be eaten_. This. Is. Optimum. Solution. You're a man, act like one.

Suddenly everything was quiet. The wind stopped howling. The rain stopped pouring. Naruto moved from his spot. He yanked the wolf strips down from branches and stuffed them in his pack. The rest he abandoned. Pots, knives, baby diapers, blankets, bed pads. They were burdens he took on for the orphans. He changed into travelling gear and surveyed the road. No moon, low light, but if he ran all night and all day, he could find the exit in a day. Once he got to the city, he could contact the Toad clan. He would put a stop to this madness.

By that time, Naruto was sure that he wouldn't even remember the names of those who had travelled with him.

He took the first step...

.

.

.

At that same time, in another place, 'Mo' Hinamori tripped over a cypress root and fell flat on her face. The boy walking in front of her stopped.

"Come on!" Hanzo held his sister to his chest and pulled his hoodie down to shield them from the downpour but he wasn't being very successful. Both he and his sister were soaked wet. Hanzo himself was used to it, having lived here all his life, but his weeks old sister was getting quieter by the minute.

Hanzo held out a hand for Mo. The girl took it and hefted herself up. A few weeks ago, Mo would have spit at that hand instead of taking it but circumstance had changed her. Shared terror had made an ally out of the boy who used to be the village pariah.

They ran together in short busts in the darkness, as fast as their little legs could carry them. They had ran all the way from camp, taking nothing but what was on them at the time, spurred on by the sheer terror that chased their heels. But the problem was that, they didn't know where they were going.

"Where... where do we go?" asked Hanzo.

"I don't know. Back home?" Hanzo stopped again and looked back. Mo saw the look in his face and felt like crying herself.

"Home," she repeated, because she didn't know what else to say and where else to go. Both she and Hanzo had never been anywhere else except their little village, where everybody knew everybody else and 'my grandmother' was also 'your grandmother' and everything was shared by everyone. Though they both knew of Kokkyo, right now, the samurai city was as far away as the heavens to them.

There was a song they used to sing in Mo's village, a children song that hummed to a strange poem. _Little children, where do you go? The sheep pass the field. The birds fly back home. Little children, where do you run?_

"Come on." She held Hanzo's hand and pulled him forward.

.

.

.

...His second step hit solid with a bang. A pot rolled noisily across his field of vision and suddenly the memories exploded inside his body. It was a handsomely-made pot, brass and copper mix, burned at the bottom but otherwise serviceable. It had functioned as both the main cooking pot and Nozomi's bath tub.

The memories were tattooed onto his skin and it spelt one word. _Baby_. The machine in his head screamed. Order. Mission. Revenge. But it was the scream of the dying. The human body wasn't quite as obedient as the human brain. When it felt, it felt. There was no denying it. And right now it was feeling the ghost of a hundred walks. The smell of his infant son ten years ago welded into the warmth of the now's baby, the same one that had slept on him, pooped on him, drunk from him.

He let his bag fell from his hand and headed down the road, after his children.

.

.

.

"You think... you think she'll come after us?"

Mo almost tripped at the mention of 'her', but she held herself in time and only hobbled two steps on one leg. Hanzo's face was dead pale when he asked this, his eyes wild and glinting.

"I don't know."

Hanzo turned away, chagrined by his own question. For once, Mo could relate. After all, they had both stayed with 'her', eaten with 'her', slept next to 'her'. Hanzo had it worse. He had liked 'her', really liked 'her'. Mo had too, but that had only been for about a day and most of it was a home-bred instinct to seek adult's approval.

"_You_ think she'll come after us?" Mo asked.

"I don't know." Hanzo snapped.

Mo held out her hand to shield against the screaming rain. The road opened before them, nothing but darkness ahead.

.

.

.

Five minutes in, Naruto happened upon the worst thing at the time. A road split. He stood between the two branches, cursing all heaven and hell.

Right? Or left?

The footprints he was chasing had already disappeared under heavy liquid artillery. He chose, hoped to hell it was the right one, and rushed forward.

.

.

.

The first sign was when Mo's feet were no longer supplanted in two inches of mud but in water. The second sight was when the mountain itself rumbled around them. The boy and girl looked at each other and thought the same thing.

Flash flood.

"We need to get to higher ground." They abandoned the road and climbed up the ascending hill-back. Green-life around them wilted under the weight of death by drowning. Flash floods were the Tsunami of highland, even worse, because one couldn't tell from which direction they were coming.

"It's coming. It's a big one." Said Hanzo, voice laden with fear. Then he screamed at her."Where?"

Mo calmed her nerves and scanned the hill back. It was hard to see. No light. The wind roared. This part of the mountain was foreign to her but if she chose wrong, all three of them would be left in the path of the flood. A slow and awful death by drowning. The ground vibrated beneath her. A tree flew by, slough off by the ferocious cascade. Hanzo fretted uselessly beside her. There!

"LEFT!" She screamed. At that exact moment, another screamed answered her.

"MO! HANZO!"

Mo's blood turned into ice. Down there on the road where they had left, the woman was racing a straight line to them. She had heard Mo's scream in the night. She was coming.

"Run!" Hanzo screamed. Mo snatched his hand and pulled them to the left, right into the flood path. Her hands registered resistant but fear gave her strength. Mo pulled Hanzo running up the mountain. Understand, please understand. Mo prayed in her head. She heard the roar of the impending water wall in front and the woman's yells behind. She pulled and run as fast as she could.

Come on, come on. Hanzo had stopped resisting. He'd got it. They had agreed to split earlier in case this happened. But not now. Not yet. Mo shot a look over her shoulder and saw the woman directly behind them, an exasperated look on her face. Too close, she thought frantically. They weren't going to make it.

Her heart drummed in its ribcage. Faster. Faster. She smelt the heavy smell of water-laden air and heard the scream of the incoming tsunami. Now!

"NOW!" Mo released Hanzo's hand and they shot apart, girl to the right, boy to the left. From the corner of her eyes, Mo saw the woman hesitating for half a minute before heading for Hanzo. That half a minute cost her her life. She was in the middle of the flood path when the cascade came barrelling from above. She hadn't seen it in the dark, hadn't heard it over the storm. Several hundred metric tonnes of moving river against a frail human body. The flood took her in an instant.

Mo stumbled, then stopped entirely. "We... we did it..." She saw Hanzo's pale face on the other side. The boy was hanging like a monkey from a tree branch amidst the seconds old river. He hadn't quite cleared the safe distance when the water came.

Mo panted wetly and felt a pain in her chest. I killed! The thought rang in her head. _I killed!_ She collapsed onto the ground and busted into sobs. She knew she should keep running, the danger was not yet over, not even nearly, but the shock of her own action froze her.

That shock lasted for exactly two minutes before a shining blue light exploded mid-river and parted it into two. In front of the orphan's eyes, the woman rose from under water,glowing red lines streaking her skin and her face, a shining ball of light in her right hand. It was that swirling ball of light, no bigger than a kid's toy, that was carving a mini whirlpool into the flood. The woman hadn't even bulged an inch and she was wearing a look that made it clear that she was **not** amused with the trap they had sprung on her.

Mo's thoughts cut right in the middle of _killed_ and transitioned seamlessly into _Uh oh!_

Then the woman held out her other hand, and this time the word that was muffled by the water before was heard loud and clear. "RASENGAN!" Another ball of light popped into existence. The whirlpool grew bigger, and to the orphan's amazement and horror, its maker started to walk slowly but steadily upstream, towards them.

The orphaned girl didn't need any more prodding after that. She got off her butt, didn't even pay any attention to the relief that she hadn't killed after all, and ran like hell. On the other side, Hanzo swung his tree branch like a giant slingshot and slung himself to dry ground. He landed exactly two steps behind Mo.

"Wah! What are you doing here?" Mo shrieked over her shoulder. They were supposed to split! Now even that distraction time she was hoping for got crossed out.

"Shut up! I can't read it. I've got to stick to you!" Hanzo shrieked back, his sister's head bobbing under his chin. Oh, right. The girl realized. Seven year old Hanzo didn't know how to navigate the flash flood. He hadn't got a father to teach him that. He'd be sitting duck for the second wave if he went alone.

Another rumble wrung itself out of the earth, the sound deep and old and angry.

"Here it comes again!" Over here on Joeki range, this phenomenon was called the Orochi, the legendary eight-headed snake, the many paths of flood that devastated their way down to the bottom valleys between mount Joe, mount Ea, and mount Aki. Joeki range was right smack-dab between the land of Fire and the land of Rain. Its unique geographical position granted it lush, thick hybrid rain forest, colossal glacier reservoir on its caps, an all-year-round fog belt, and the meanest flash floods that were adamant to come around and visit every month or so. The people of Woodsmen Ville, in defence of their own life and livelihood, had learned how to navigate the rain god's temper since they were young. They called it flood navigation, or water scout if one wanted to be fancy. It consisted mainly of reading the signs of where the nearest flood path would go through and getting clear off that area.

"Up! Up!" Mo steered her fellow orphans north east. The ground there was a mass of stone ridges and vine creepers, a bitch to climb through but the best bet they could take right now. The natural trenches would direct the flood into one thin but incredibly destructive flow and left the peaks as safe zone for them. In this kind of situation, flat ground would only widen the destruction area of the flood. The key to survival here was speed. Mo grabbed the tail end of one creeper and crawled up as fast as she could.

"She's still chasing us!"

"Of course she is, dumbass! We tried to kill her!" She would have whacked Hanzo over the head if her hands were free. But the sight of the woman hot on their heels, slowly but steadily, propelled her to climb faster.

"... Unsuccessfully." Hanzo spit out his argument on attempted murder. He was about to point out that she was the instigator and therefore the one to blame, not him, when they heard the growl of the Orochi, its second head coming.

"Come on! We've got to clear it." Mo pointed to a deep trench a head of them. The dirt and debris at its bottom were dancing wildly, a clear danger signal. Normally, she wouldn't dare take such a route. It was far safer to stay their ground on the peak between the trenches and wait the flood out. But the pursuer at their back wasn't one to be pestered by something like several thousand metric tonnes of melted ice and rain in the way. The woman would simply walk through it like it wasn't even there. There was only one way, and it was forward. They had got to keep moving.

They made it in the nick of the time.

"Keep running! Keep running!"

It was only the second head. The Orochi didn't get its name for nothing. The orphans ran, crawled, climbed, and prayed that the ground wouldn't give beneath their feet. Mo's hands were stubs of lacerated flesh but the adrenaline racing through her veins kept the pain at bay.

Suddenly, they heard a loud earthy groan.

"Mo! Mo!"

"I know! I know! Don't look up! Just keep going!"

That sound didn't come from the Orochi. It was bigger trouble than that. It was the sound of a landslide. Somewhere up above, the ground had given and a piece of the mountain itself was coming down on their head.

They ran, stumbled, fell on their faces, got up and ran again. Mo had stopped water scouting. It was no use. The landslide dwarfed the flood by a wide margin. Death by being buried under a mountain was a far worse death by simple drowning. She only prayed that the avalanche of rock and dirt wouldn't fan out too wide. She only prayed that they would clear the distance on time.

Her prayers went unanswered. After five minutes of blind running, the landslide came into view, a behemoth wave in the dark. Mo got only one second to heave a relieved breath - '_It's mud. Thank god, it's mud!_' – before she was swept under. Mo flopped and kicked frantically in the mud stream, trying to break it to surface before her air went out. Several times the night skies flashed into views before her eyes.

She screamed and cried and fought for her life against the current carrying her down, down. This was no good. There was only way this was going. The current was heading for the cliff valleys in between the mountains. They would fall to their death. She clawed into the mud, trying to find purchase.

The last time the skies broke open before her, Mo found herself clinging to a rope of creepers dangling off the edge of a cliff, the mud wave racing pass her down a great fall. Mo sobbed. Her body trembled with fatigue, her fingers slippery with sweat and slime. It would be so easy to slip, to let go now. "Oh mama! Mama!" From the far corner of her eyes, she saw Hanzo also hanging onto his life.

It was at this exact moment that the woman came into view. She walked slowly, her back against the mudslide, immovable and impervious to its pull. All thoughts went out of Mo's head. Only one remained, an absolute refusal to die.

"Naruto! Naruto!" She heard herself yelling the name she thought she wouldn't use. On the far right, Hanzo followed her lead. The woman looked between them, hesitating. Behind her, the second wave mudslide and the Orochi thundered down.

Mo screamed the name again and again, hoping to drown out the other boy. _Savemesavemesaveme_. The creepers in her hand snapped with a dry twang. The last sight she saw was the woman free-falling toward Hanzo.

* * *

They buried the child came morning. There was no body, only a small empty grave and a marker saying '_Here lies Hope'_ by a creek in the bottom of a nameless valley. She had been swept away and lost forever. Naruto stood by two weeping children and thought of the marker they had left back in Woodsmen Ville.

_Mom_

_Your son loves you_

_Baby lives_

Well, if they ever got back there again, they would have to cross out the last line. Naruto was dry-eyed when he thought this but his face must have shown something because 'Mo' Hinamori looked at him as if she had just discovered something big, something life-changing.

"Do ninja hurt too?"

"Yes, we do," He said simply. He hated the civilian misconception that being a ninja was carte blanche against hurt of all kinds, as if being given theoretical training was sufficient to weather death like once-a-day vitamin pills. Something like loss didn't give a damn whether you have a PhD in combating post-traumatic stress disorder. It just was. "Sometimes... we hurt really bad."

When the sun settled fully over the valley, he led the two children to a bare plain. They followed him mutely, docilely. He should have done this from the start. Naruto thought as he set to work. Using a sturdy branch, he drew a glyph in the dirt. He finished after five hours of work. Laid out on the ground was the bone frame of a grade S summoning seal. But he was not yet finished. The glyph needed one more ingredient before it was fully active.

"Get back behind there." He ordered the children, but then stopped himself. Stupid, if it blew, it would obliterate this whole mountain range. What was a few metres distance compared to that?

"Hey, I'm going to do something really terrible." He told them instead. "But I'm doing it so we can get out of here alive, so don't you be scared. Kay?" He waited for them to nod, then very slowly he raised a knife over his left hand, aimed, and made a clean cut through his shoulder.

.

.

.

The Toad Boss Gamabunta puffed into the clearing wearing only a loin cloth, a hot spring steam towel and a giant wood bucket. He flapped the towel in shock and anger.

"What? What the hell? I was in the middle of..." Then a voice cut through.

"Hey! Tadpole! I thought I weren't ever going to see you."

Tadpole! Gamabunta whipped around, ready to rip someone a new hole.

"Who..." He started, then saw the thing sitting on a rock before him. He changed his question. "_**What **_are you?"

Naruto smiled at him cheekily. "Ah, I was hoping your grandpapa could tell me that."

* * *

Tadashi Senju arrived at the bank of river Mu on the second day of his tracking mission. It was there that he found his biggest clue to his target, a set of standard Senju travelling clothes, armour, and sandals discarded on the bank. He checked them thoroughly for traces of the target but found very little. The clothes had been left here for weeks. Rain and wind had scrapped most of them away.

The presence of the discarded items uneased him. A woman, wearing nothing but a flimsy undershirt, alone in the wilderness. If it wasn't for the lack of any signs of struggle, Tadashi would have arrived at some uncomfortable conclusion.

He gathered the items into a duffel bag and sealed the bag into his flank scroll, then stood up and surveyed the trail. She headed to the West. He read from the various broken branches and the rare traces of chakra left behind. Not good. Hashirama would not be pleased. The West land was under mass unrest. Rumours of rampant human trafficking and even an invasion from Ame. The Uchiha was in power there. The West right now was no place for a woman like his target.

He needed to report this back to the new clan head. There could be further instructions to track and retrieve her right from the heart of the war zone. That would mean serious investment in time when resources were running thin. Things weren't pretty in the clan right now. But that would come later. The decision was Hashirama's. Tadashi trusted Hashirama, his cousin twice removed. He was a good leader, the best one they had in generations. Tadashi would follow him to battle and to death if necessary. With that decided, Tadashi Senju turned and took off to his clan base.

* * *

End chapter 5

* * *

Did any body read the new Naruto chapter? They should change the name Edo Tensei to God Mode no Jutsu instead.

Any way, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year every one! A bit early but oh well...

* * *

I dedicate this chapter to my two betas, Michelle and Kevin, who delighted in playing commentary football using me as the ball. If it weren't for them, I would never finish this chapter. It's also to them that I owe an apology for being so late. This chapter was supposed to come out one and a half month ago.

* * *

Next chapter will be the last chapter of I. Eva Luna. It's name is 'The burning of trees' and it will tie up the events in the Senju clan after Naruto's departure and Hashirama's incident with his father. Also, in the next chapter, one canon character will predict the murder of a different canon character at the hand of another canon character (have fun guessing!)

II. Kiiroi Kami will open with chapter 7: 'Rat's city'. Kiiroi Kami will be much heavier on plot, politics, and war, and contains the development of the Fire Daimyo plot thread and several major players for the last part. It will also be a bit more light-hearted and less angst-fest than Eva Luna. Also, Naruto will kick two tonnes of asses in it, courtesy of being a war general.

* * *

The trap maze in this chapter was based on a real life maze called the Figure-Eight maze in Sanskrit text (the ancient mother language of modern Hindi, Nepalese, Bangladeshi, etc... and the originator religious language of Buddhism and Hinduism). The maze was famous for leaving no survivor unless they know its secret. Historically, several hill tribes people had weaponized this maze against invading armies.

~ Sythe


	6. Chapter 6: The Burning of Trees

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

Part 2: Uchiha

**I. Eva Luna:**

**Chapter 6:** **The Burning of Trees**

"... even angels have their wicked schemes..."

* * *

For Tadashi Senju, the day when his clan really started was a cold autumn Wednesday, at exactly noon.

He remembered that Wednesday very clearly, from its shoddy morning in a roadside inn fifty miles south of Nichiyo-shi, the capital of Fire, to its dream-like evening in his own jounin-sized bedroom one and a half miles underground. He remembered the oily half-rotten fish in their morning soup and Hashirama Senju's absentminded expression as he scooped it into his mouth. Shabby eatery under the same inn, table for four in the corner, facing the door and the window, the whole team disguised as travelling merchants. He also remembered the stuffy, one-week vacant air of his room as he sat on the bed, ninjato in hand, and listened attentively to the shouted orders and thudding footsteps in the corridor. Words like 'lock-down', 'traitor', 'execution', 'find', rang into the next morning.

The biggest event, however, had happened at exactly noon. The attempted assassination of the twenty-seventh clan leader, Yoshizawa Senju, and his son.

That had happened at around 1330 hours. Tadashi Senju, however, knew that this wasn't going to be a normal Wednesday since 7:00 AM. The reason? Because Hashirama was distracted.

Tadashi had known Hashirama since he was eight years old, with 'known' meaning going on A-rank missions together. The boy was never distracted. It was the reason they made him jounin at ten years old, not because Hashirama's father was the clan leader but because the boy had pure talent, a mind to use it, and the raw determination to be the best of his generation. When Tadashi had met Hashirama for the first time, he had been plainly unnerved by the way the eight year old's eyes scanned him, looking for threats, looking for opportunities, looking _inside_ him.

But at that moment, 7 AM in the morning, faced with a breakfast he wouldn't give to a dog he hated, Tadashi had just thought, 'Hormones.' After all, Hashirama was at that age when the red-blooded male inside him woke up and made a few demands. The Senju heir's raging hormones probably kicked him out of his wet, sperm-spilled bed before six every morning. Tadashi was pretty sure he knew who the target of Hashirama's distracted mind was too. It was pretty obvious with all the rumours running rampant between the two, Hashirama and the _Witch_, one going so far as to say they had spent one night together. Tadashi didn't mind though. The mission was a success, and no one could deny that the Witch was _very _beautiful.

At 12:30, they approached the West gate of their compound. Tadashi looked onto Hashirama's back with some exasperation when the boy jumped through the gate keepers without stopping for identification. He recognized the direction the boy was heading to, not to his father to submit their mission report, but to the _Witch_ in her _Vine Forest_.

"Love birds," Tadashi could only mutter before apologizing to the gate keepers.

13:45 was when the shit hit the fan. When members of the elite BLACK OP raced through the corridor, issuing lock-down orders, Tadashi was with several friends in the mess hall, updating himself on the one week he had been away. Crisis, they said, complete lock-down compound-wide and a twenty-miles radius of surrounding forest. Tadashi was ordered back to his room and to stay there until the state of emergency was lifted.

14:15, Tadashi had a conversation with his left-side neighbour through a three-inch thick wall. The tokubetsu jounin told him about the assassination of clan leader Yoshizawa. He also told him that the son, Hashirama, was present at the time, and was now in the infirmary with one ruined eye, a stab wound, and two weeks under intensive care before he was well enough to walk.

Assassination? How the hell could that happen? If Yoshizawa-sama was felled in battled he could understand, but the Senju clan head was in his office, in the heart of the strongest ninja clan, with his son beside him. Assassinated? And the perpetrator got away without any one in the clan the wiser until a battered Hashirama managed to crawl to the corridor where the servants spotted him.

A ninja who could do this, defeating not one but two of Senju clan's best warriors and getting away with it, could only be a monster. That was Tadashi's conclusion. The elders must have come to the same conclusion because in that two weeks when there was no leader, the clan was kept under iron-fist control. All out-bound missions were ceased. Communications with other clans and with clients were put on hold. Diplomats were called back. The fortress was searched from its highest tower to its lowest dungeon. No Senju, no matter how high or how low, were spared the background search. All of this in the effort to flush out the traitors who had enabled the infiltration and subsequent attack.

The day the two weeks ended, Tadashi was summoned. He stood in one corner of the room, looking at the elders of the Senju clan with wide eyes. Just why the hell was he here? He was just a no-rank rookie jounin. It should have been BLACK OPS on guard duty today.

"Hashirama, you're now the twenty-eighth Senju clan head." Said elder Benkei.

"Was that ever in doubt?"

Benkei frowned. "You're still so young, Hashirama. But there's nothing to be feared. We will lead you every step of the way. You will surpass your father under our tutelage. That is a sure fact." He motioned to his secretary who presented a tray bearing several scrolls on it. "Past treatises to be confirmed. I assume you're unfamiliar with them. Not to worry, we've selected an assistant for you."

The teenage clan head merely glanced at the coverings of the scrolls."Fuma. Mochizuki. Yagyu. Ishikawa" He raised one eye-brow at the last name. "Uzumaki?"

Chiyome Senju glided forward, as graceful as she was thirty years ago as the kenjutsu queen of the land. "Hashirama-chan, I know it must be hard. A young boy like you? Marriage now? All these pretty ladies you will never taste, am I right? But Hashirama-chan, there's always a time for everything. The lady Mito and her clan will be tremendous help to us. She's your age, and a distant cousin. And..." A smile drew itself across her face. "... in the case of... dissatisfaction, I'm sure no one would ever look if you have... others"

"It is not that." Replied Hashirama, unruffled. "Though I'd like to defer my marriage until my father is properly sent. These clans... Fuma leader's daughter is married to Towa, Benkei-dono's son, Mochizuki is under a three generation agreement with Hanei-dono, so is Ishikawa, but to you Chiyome-dono. Yagyu..."

Tadashi stiffened in the corner, realizing what was going on. The elders were forcing the clan head to sign over his power to them.

"Those who support us also support the Senju clan, Hashirama." Said Benkei. "Youngsters like you may think themselves invincible, but even the strongest shinobi grows old..."

"Even the Hyuuga cannot watch their backs at all time." Chiyome lent in.

"We are the Senju, the thousand hands. We find strength in our unison, not in the fleeting power of individuals. Your father was a great friend of ours, Hashirama. You are in great hands. There's no need to fear."

"You..." The young clan head laughed, the sound tight and bitter. "You all must think I'm a child." Something flickered on and off in his face. "Tadashi-san." Tadashi jerked in surprise. "I forgot the clan's laws. Remind me please. What is the punishment for treason?" Tadashi hesitated for one second. "Death, Hashirama-sama."

"What is the punishment for scheming against the clan head?"

"Death, Hashirama-sama."

Tadashi felt a bit breathless. The elders stared at Hashirama.

"What is the punishment for hoarding power against the clan?"

"Death... Hashirama-sama."

The room fell into a hush for a few minutes. Then Benkei broke it. "Of course, clan head." The word 'clan-head' escaped his mouth with a sneer. "We will take our leave now. Arima, leave the treatises. Hashirama-dono will look over it and decide later, we presume."

Then they left, and it was war in the clan.

* * *

The coronation of the twenty-eighth Senju clan head, Hashirama Senju, was a muted affair. The six elders of the clan presented a fresh-from-bed-rest Hashirama to a crowd of Senju nin. A few letters were sent to notify home bases about the new head. Tadashi had a front row seat to the ceremony and from there he could see the seventeen years old Hashirama standing in a circle of powerful men many time his seniors. He felt something like pity and something like fear in his chest.

Things were changing in the clan. Rumours. Under-handed dealings. The new clan head's suitability was being questioned. His age, his dalliances with the _Witch_, the strange circumstances of his father's assassination. In a clan like the Senju, hereditary counted for nothing. Every Senju was as pure as the other. Everyone was each other's cousins, brothers, nephews, uncles. The seat of clan head was merely a matter of the right alliances.

On the night of the coronation, Tadashi received a summon from Hashirama himself. Here it comes, he thought, the deciding moment. They met in the West wing courtyard of the underground compound. Hashirama was alone.

"Hashirama-sama," Tadashi dropped to one knee on the ground. He was surprised to hear Hashirama's first comment.

"Tadashi-kun, please don't call me sama. I am still your cousin." The boy smiled an easy but tired smile. "Tadashi-kun, right now, in the whole clan, I can trust only you."

Hashirama trusted only him? Under the first recoil of surprise, Tadashi was oddly pleased.

"It can't be that bad, Ha-kun."

"Can't be that bad? I am not deaf, Tadashi-kun. Neither am I stupid. My own brothers would stab me in the back for a mere title. The BLACK OPS want me to rule as my father did, or not at all. The elders scheme to make me their own puppet. There are those who questioned why I failed to defend my father. It is that bad, Tadashi-kun."

Tadashi had no reply to that.

"Our clan is falling apart and all they can think about is how to cling onto their positions. They would better themselves at the cost of their own brothers." Then he laid a hand on Tadashi's shoulder. "I know they have approached you." Tadashi stiffened. "I understand your position. Our clan is divided, and I'm the weakest option any Senju could choose. If they choose the wrong master, they would have to pay with their lives. I do not mind that they don't choose me. I know my duty. I only want the best for the clan. But it pains me to see Senjus fighting each other."

Every last part of that was true. Two days ago, Tadashi was approached by one of Benkei, demanding that he either swear his loyalty to them or go down along with the child leader. Tadashi was no naive first year genin. It didn't matter how strong a clan head was, he was still only one person. A clan head's strength was measured by the combined strength of the men who'd fight for him, die for him. At that moment, he knew the exact the exact number of Benkei and the BLACK OPS's strength, half of the clan, the better half. If he were to choose... if he were to choose... Tadashi faltered.

This close, he could see Hashirama's face. There was a two-day old stubble on the boy's chin that made for a comical look. Tadashi nearly laughed. His mind flexed reflexively. If Hashirama weren't the clan head and they weren't discussing something like this, Tadashi would have hollered right to his face: "Ha-kun, don't try for the tough nin look. Beard doesn't suit you. It makes you look like a genin with a hairy problem." Somebody would have to teach the boy how to shave without filleting his face. That thought stilled Tadashi. Well, ain't gonna be any who dared do that to him now. He was clan head. He was either going to die, or to rule them. Naturally, that kind of clan heads had to learn how to shave by himself.

"Tadashi-kun, remember when we fought on Komi's borders?"

Tadashi nodded. Now that was a hell hole he wouldn't want to go back too.

"You remembered what I told you when we took Han's corpse back to his wife? When we had to put him inside a cow and said we were meat merchants to cross the border... his wife had to take him in smelling of cow's guts."

He nodded again. Suddenly all thoughts of Benkei and BLACK OPS fled him.

"I told you that I had a dream." But the Hashirama now wasn't the thirteen year old kid back at Komi on that rainy day. There was something about him now that made Tadashi listened to his every word. Something about Hashirama made him want to trust him, made him want to...

"I will create a new world..."

Tadashi couldn't breathe.

"... a world where even the lowest of us can stand proudly under the sun." Then Hashirama looked at him. Suddenly he was the kid in Komi, but also bigger than that―much bigger. "Will you help me create it?"

There were many thoughts that crossed Tadashi's head on that day, too many to make sense of, but the result ended with Tadashi back on his knee, shamed, humbled. How could he even think of deserting his blood brother in need?

"Hashirama-dono, my swords are yours to command."

Half an hour after Tadashi left, another Senju nin approached the West wing courtyard. Hashirama opened their conversation with "Hito-kun, right now, in the whole clan, I can trust only you..."

* * *

Tadashi received his first mission under the new clan head two days after: Find the _Witch_. He wasn't surprised by that, but before he departed, he had to confirm something.

"Hashirama, if I may ask one question. What is that eye?"

The day they took off the patch on Hashirama's ruined eye birthed a new horde of rumours. Instead of the empty socket everyone had been expecting, a new eye was there, blue, a deep swirling vortex blue without any white. Naturally everyone wanted to know where exactly the clan head had got this eye from? What was it power? Whose chakra signature was it giving off? Why did it not look like an eye but more like...

"It's a... a promise..." Hashirama touched his new eye. "... a promise I made to..."

To...?

"... to a dear friend."

Tadashi nodded. So it was true. On that day before they left, Tadashi had spied Hashirama saying goodbye to the Witch. He had seen the blue ball of condensed chakra clutched in the boy's fingers. He had seen the Witch's hands on the boy shoulders, not pushing but coaxing. He had seen her eyes too, the same blue, looking at the young Hashirama like she was seeing something in the future. It was the look of someone who knew they would meet again, that they had something to create together, an oath, a promise, a home. She had left it to protect the boy. She had predicted the trouble to come. Women didn't protect things that weren't dear to them, especially ninja women like her.

Tadashi left the Senju fortress as fast as he could. He would bring the _Witch_ back if he had to pay with his life.

Three days after Tadashi came back with the Witch's discarded items, the Purge began. Hashirama Senju rose with three-fourths of the clans ninja, many of which were once loyal to the elders or to BACK OPS, and enacted martial law on the usurpers. Ninety eight traitors were executed. Twenty fled and became rouge-nin. Elder Benkei, Chiyome, and Hanei were stripped of their titles and sent into exile.

On the morning of September 20th, 3xxx, ten years before the Senju-Uchiha alliance, Hashirama Senju assumed full control as the twenty-eighth Senju clan head.

September 22nd, 3xxx, the secret code of the Uzumaki clan's barrier was breached. This secret code was only known to the Uzumaki and their allied cousins the Senju. September 22nd was subsequently known as the Uzumaki massacre. Majority of the clan members were killed by invading clans. Nothing was known of the princess Mito. Some said she was killed in the massacre. Some said she escaped under the disguise of a maid. By that time, Hashirama Senju, her supposed future husband, had cinched new alliances with the Aburame, Yamanaka, Nara, and Sarutobi and affirmed the Senju's position as the greatest ninja clan.

September 24th, Tobirama Senju, eleven years old and the clan's second generation genius, was called to the front line.

September 25th, Toka Senju, seventeen, took post as Genjutsu mistress in training.

September 26th, exclusive contracts with Hi no Kuni were annuled. The Senju clan officially took a neutral stance between all countries.

A new era began.

* * *

After the nightmare of Woodsmen Ville, Mount Myobokuzan was the most beautiful place Naruto had ever seen. The buildings were exactly as he had remembered. The trees were green with life. The toads hobbled and stared at him. They were unused to human presence at this point but he paid them no mind.

When the Great Toad Sage finally received Naruto in his room, his severed left arm had grown back to its wrist.

"Naruto-chan, it's a pleasure to meet you in person at last." Said the Toad sage, surprisingly lucid.

"You've been watching me."

"We have, Naruto-chan, since the day you woke up in the Senju clan's compound. You're our investment to the future."

If this had been a few weeks ago, he would have been angry. If they had known, then why the hell hadn't the toads taken him in? It would have saved everyone so much trouble. But now, after the emotional roller coaster of the trap maze, Naruto found himself unmoved.

"I assume you have a reason to waste all of our time."

"We do, Naruto-chan. My future self would have liked to send you straight to me but that was beyond him. To traverse time, there must be two points of attraction, cathode and anode. The First Hokage's necklace of your time is one. Hashirama Senju is the other."

Naruto nodded. He'd guessed that much.

"I would have liked to take you from that place but there is a rule in the summon world, that we are never to interfere with the human world unless it concerned our summoners. At this point in time, your name is not yet on the Toad scroll. We couldn't do anything until you called on us. I must commend you though. A blood seal of that calibre. You are a talented seal master but wouldn't a different seal have been safer?"

The seal of blood sacrifice, ten percent chance of success, ninety percent of death.

"It was worth the risk." Naruto said simply. Any other seals would require either special equipments or special times of the year, neither of which he had at the time. But Naruto wasn't here today to discuss something as trivial as that. "So, I'm here. What's on the agenda? What am I now? I suppose I'm not human."

"Katsuyu," said the Toad Sage. Right on cue, the slug boss slithered in front of him and took over.

"You're still human, Naruto-san. You're double human." She produced a picture graph of a DNA string, Naruto's DNA code. There was one problem though. Normal human DNA was a double helix. The one shown on the graph, on the other hand, was a quadruple. "Amazing!" Katsuyu breathed. "To think that the Jubi is capable of such feats."

The Jubi?

"Can you start at the beginning? We're talking about me here."

"Ah, I'm sorry. I forget myself whenever I'm excited." The Slug made a fanning gesture. "Well, Naruto-san, when you contacted me two days ago to analyse a sample of your body, I never thought I would discover something like this." That was what he had expected. DNA analysis was delicate work unsuited to his atrocious chakra control. That was why he needed Katsuyu in the first place.

"The short version is: you are the pinnacle of human evolution." Katsuyu gestured excitedly at the graph. "Let's call this a double-layered DNA. This one here..." Her tentacle pointed to the upper part. "... is your old DNA code, perfectly normal. We'll call it surface layer. But this one, this basement, this underground layer..." The tentacle moved to the lower part. "... is changing, evolving as we speak. If we were to discuss theoretically then there is no true perfection. Perfection implies the highest point a being can reach, the point of no return because there is nothing ahead, this being is the end of all beings. There is nothing better beyond this. But that is not true. All manners of living creatures change every day. The king of today's food-chain is tomorrow's bottom rung. The so-called static perfection is cancelled out by the mere changing of environment; any evolutionary theorist would tell you that"

"But this..." Katsuyu was positively in love with her graph. "... a perfection that moves, that adapts itself continually to the environment. It cannot be killed. It will not grow old. No sickness could ever touch it. It will heal itself over death. No other predators will ever dare hunt it. It is the ultimate predator. This being has no equal."

Naruto coughed loudly. Katsuyu snapped back, her pallid body flushing a berry color.

"Alright, let's see if I got it. So this is me." He pointed to the first layer. "And this is... the Jubi" Second layer. "Am I right?"

"Ah... no..." Naruto was suddenly treated to the sight of a giant blue-and-white slug conversing in the search for a good explanation. "This is... how do I explain it? Your body right now is one hundred percent human. Your old DNA code is acting as the frame, the stabilizer, whereas the moving second code is the expansion, the improvement of the original. They are always moving in unison despite the second code's constant changes."

"Great. So the Jubi is wearing my genetic makeup like Gamabunta wears his happi vest."

"That is... one way to put it." Katsuyu conceded at last. "But that's not very accurate. There is absolutely nothing of the Jubi in the second code. It is completely human."

"How so?"

A pinched look appeared on Katsuyu's face "... I have heard of your... incident in the human village. You... ate them."

Naruto nodded.

"How many?"

Naruto snorted. "I have no idea. I wasn't exactly in control of myself at the time. You should ask the guy inside me? Or is it gal?"

"Well, it does not matter. What matters is I've found them here... inside this second code. They are the raw materials to the second code's evolution. Those villagers, they are all in you, the best part of them. Have you had other symptoms?"

"Yes," he replied, but in a voice that made it clear that there would be no elaboration. It was no one's business that he had had traces of their memories. He wore their skins in his dream. There were nights when he was a simple lumberjack boy, nights when he was the leader of the village, nights when he was the pregnant mother of Mo.

"I suspect if you ever consume better materials, the old ones from the villagers will be flushed out."

"So if I eat an Uchiha, I will suddenly grow a pair of Sharingan?" He laughed when Katsuyu attempted to answer. "Don't answer that. It's not going to happen, not in a million years"

Naruto drew one deep breath and absorbed the information. So he really did die. This body was virgin new. It was a superhuman body, immortal, indestructible, with the ability to absorb other human's DNA, their blood lines, their special abilities, and a part of their memory. If what Katsuyu said was true, then it was the most fearsome human weapon he had ever known.

"What's the price?" He bit out at last.

"Price, Naruto-san?"

He looked at the Slug boss long and hard. "Katsuyu-dono, if what you said is true, then this body is one heck of a free lunch. I was the host of the Kyuubi for twenty-six years of my life. Granted, I did not know of it for the first twelve years, but in my experience, beings like Kyuubi doesn't give things for free. I'm just assuming this, but since Jubi was supposed to be the mother source of all the tailed beasts, I think it's safe to say that it's about ten times meaner than my old tenant."

Naruto watched the slug and the toad exchange a glance. Just what was going on here? What weren't they telling him? After a few minutes of silence, the Toad Sage rumbled from his throne.

"I will take it from here Katsuyu." Then he turned to Naruto. "Naruto-chan, how much do you know about the Jubi?"

"Not much." He suspected even Madara didn't know much about it.

"I thought so. The legend of the Jubi and the Sage of Six Paths is far beyond your time. The humans have forgotten. They only remember the Sage, and only as a mythical figure. They've erased everything about the Jubi. Understandable, it is human nature to want to forget painful things." Then the Great Toad heaved one big sigh and told Naruto the most absurd thing he had ever heard.

"Naruto-chan, the Jubi used to be human."

A great hush fell over the room.

"Ah... you... you're kidding right?"

"What is so hard to believe? That something as evil as the Jubi might have roots in humanity? Evil itself was born from human. Us summoned creatures, we had no notion of it until you brought it to us. Naruto-chan, it is human who created the zero-tailed masked leech. It is human who created the dark god Jashin. Humanity itself is the mother of the Jubi."

"Now listen closely..." The Great Toad waved his webbed flapper. Smoke rose from the water of his prophetic basin and drew two figures in the air. One was clearly a man. The other towered over him, monstrously large.

"Legend says that long ago, a great beast called the Jubi stalked the Earth, killing and destroying wherever it went." The smoke beast prowled imaginary landscape. "A man appeared and vanquished this beast. He was called the Sage of Six Paths. The humans of that time revered him as a god-like figure and learned the ninja arts from him." The smoke man pounced on the smoke beast and felled it in one swoop.

"That... is what you humans believe happened. There is more written on the stone tablets kept by the Uchiha clan. It was written that the Sage sealed the beast into himself and became the first jinchuriki, that he entrusted his younger son to carry on his mission of peace, so on so forth. However, all of that is wrong."

Wrong? Naruto sputtered.

"Well, perhaps not so much wrong, but an incomplete truth. Now, this is how it happened according to the lore kept by the summon clans."

At once, the smoke figures dispersed and a white landscape took over. "Long ago, in a time when the Earth was much larger than now and there was no moon yet, a great many countries warred with each other. One of those countries was ruled by a king who was well-versed in blood rituals. In order to bolster his country's military might, this king schemed to create a powerful weapon no other country possessed. To do this, he scoured the peasants of his kingdom and chose among them the few special humans who were born with the ability to call on the spirits of nature―the sages, monks, priests, specially gifted humans. These humans, thousands of them, were then ritualistically tortured and killed. Their flesh became the flesh of a monster. Their souls, in the agony of death, summoned the chakra of the earth and with it became the soul of the beast. The creature that was born was called the Jubi for its ten tails. As expected, it was powerful beyond compared, too powerful..."

"Let me guess... the king lost control. The Jubi got out of its cage and partied on his country. Is it just me or do none of these villains ever read the Evil Overlord List?"

The Great Toad merely shrugged and kept his story going. "... only a handful of the special humans survived. Most scattered, for fear of being hunted down for their blood line. Their descendants are still here today, the so-called Kekkai Genkai carriers, though each is unique, they all have the same root. Among these survivors, one came back, a priest who was on a pilgrimage to other countries during the scourge. He was your legendary Sage of Six Paths."

"Now, here is where the two versions most differ. The humans like to think that the Sage won on mere strength. He did not. The power of the Jubi is incomparable. But all things have certain vulnerability. With the Jubi, its vulnerability lies in its origin."

"The humans?"

The Toad Sage nodded. "Humans gifted with the natural ability to call on nature chakra. Without any training, without fear of being turned to stone or be devoured alive, they can call on the power of nature and take it within themselves. The Sage of Six Paths exploited this weakness and sealed the Jubi within himself. He intended to use his priest training to purify the hatred of the dead and release the bound souls into the Pure World. He failed. There were thousands of souls inside the Jubi, each of them a brother or sister of the Sage. How could a single human shoulder the madness of the thousands?"

The Great Toad shook his head in remembrance. "Instead of vanquishing the Jubi, the Sage found himself attacked from within. By taking the beast into him, he saved the world, but that also meant allowing his enemy into his most vulnerable place, his very soul itself. Can you imagine it, Naruto-chan? To be soul-linked to madness and hatred, to have it whispering in your ears every second of every day, to dream the memory of the dead, to live out the agony of their dying moments. An ordinary man would have gone mad in a matter of days, but the Sage fought staunchly. His soul was strong, worthy of his Sage title. But where his soul succeeded, his body failed. The foul chakra of the Jubi slowly corroded his body, corrupting it. His eyes were the first to change."

"The Rinnegan?"

"Correct. The humans forgot it but we, summoned beasts, do not. The Sage only developed the Rinnegan after absorbing the Jubi. The eyes itself bear great resemblance to Jubi's one eye. In his life-time, the Sage managed to hold off, but this corruption grew in further generation. Naruto-chan, have you ever wondered why the ultimate Sharingan demand such inhuman acts to activate? To be human is to love. The Mangekyo Sharingan requires its user to commit increasingly atrocious acts, to denounce their humanity itself in order to keep its power. By a chance of luck, the Hyuuga avoided this slippery road."

"Not all Uchiha are..." Naruto argued.

"Not all, yes. But the temptation is there. The further the Uchiha line evolves, the more unstable they become. You have seen the mutations of your time. Their eyes force them to remember vividly, and their ninja lifestyle isn't exactly the kind to foster positive memories. It is so very easy to take one wrong step."

"Is there a cure?"

"If there is, I imagine your current body is the key to finding it. But, let me finish my story." Naruto nodded to his request. "Two years after absorbing the Jubi, the Sage knew he had failed and that his time was limited. If he did nothing, the evil chakra would warp his body until it either became the new vessel of the Jubi or ceased functioning at all. The Sage made a decision and abandoned his religious practice. He went to the North, married a woman there, and with her had two sons. He raised his sons with everything he had, teaching them everything he knew. When the day his death came, he put both of them to a test."

"The younger son passed?"

"No. Both failed. You see, the Sage wasn't idle all those years. He invested his time into studying the monster inside him, until the day he discovered the way to destroy it once and for all. The Sage couldn't do it himself. He had hoped that his two sons would carry this task for him. His hope was shattered when both failed the test. The Sage, whose Uzumaki descendant could easily live to two hundred, died at the prime age of thirty-seven. Before he died, he did the only thing he could to stave off the Jubi's revival. He splintered it into nine beasts. You humans cowered before the nine, but they were mere failures, fragments of an unimaginable force, unable to grow, unable to change, stupid, unresponsive, and easily tamed."

"What happened to the two sons?"

"They split. The elder brother, who held the knowledge to destroy the Jubi, went to the West. The younger brother, whose body contained the power to destroy the Jubi, went to the East. Both vowed never to share the same name, never to share the same roof, never to stay in the same country. And that... is the true story of the Sage."

"And I am the sequel. Is that what you're saying?" Naruto's voice was muted, filled with a dread he couldn't suppress. "Just like the Sage, I battled and absorbed an unimaginable evil. I bit off more than I can chew."

"Naruto-san..." Katsuyu cut in. "There's no easy way to explain this. Your situation is similar to the Sage, but at the same time, not. You both harboured the Jubi. However, the Sage was a mere jinchuriki, a temporary and ill-fitted vessel. You, on the other hand..."

"Your new body, your changed gender, your extreme dietary habits, none of it was coincident." The Great Toad rumbled. "If the Jubi has intelligence, it is not something we can comprehend. There are thousands of separate minds inside it, none of them sane. For the first time in more than a thousand years, this combined consciousness was freed from the lock of the Sage. We do have our suspicions..."

"Quit the yabber! Just give me straight answers." Naruto snapped. He didn't have the stomach for rhetoric now. The Toad Sage paused for a moment.

"Very well," He said at last. "The short version is: the Jubi is slowly taking you over, Naruto."

Naruto snorted, somehow not surprised.

"You absorbed the Jubi―fused with it. That is the key. The Sage of Six Path's body was unfitted to house the monstrous chakra. As a result, he died and the chakra was released. With you, that cannot happen. You and the Jubi are bound. If you die, it dies. The fortification of your body was an attempt to survive. No normal human body could house something as monstrous as the Jubi. The Sage is the example. The need for human meat is simply a way to collect all the strains of the ancient bloodline. The Jubi seeks to remedy its weakness against the descendants of the gifted humans. The logic is simple: if it becomes one of them, if it surpasses them, then the weakness is no more. Even with our strongest seal, in a few years, this process will be completed. Once this weakness is gone and your body strong enough, the Jubi will awaken once more... and you..." The Great Toad Sage trailed off. What he did not say floated in the air.

The silence was deafening. The Sage stared at him solemnly. Katsuyu fidgeted.

"Naruto-san, perhaps..."

"Don't." The slug blinked, surprised. "You're trying to console me. I appreciate that, but..." He stood up, dusted his pants. "... I'm fed up with moping. I've done enough of it in that shithole of a forest." He looked back the Toad Sage. "I've always worked better with a death threat above my head. The seal I used to absorb the nine tailed-beasts was an Uzumaki seal. Is there any chance that it might be a contingency plan left by the Sage?"

"... it might." The Great Toad nodded slowly. "The answer probably is still on the tablets kept by..."

"... the Uchiha." Naruto completed his sentence. He grinned savagely. "All the more reasons to pay them a visit, huh. Perfect."

* * *

The next morning found Naruto in the Sacred Oil Fountain. He was knee deep in the oil, his skin slick with it. 50 grams of raw THX-1138 raced through his blood veins. An amount that would destroy a normal brain but on him, it was just enough to cut off all extreme emotional responses. For once in a long time, there was a sterilized quiet in his mind. He liked that.

Naruto lifted one hand, drew back, and launched a punch at the stone pillar in front. The moment his fist made contact, the pillar exploded in a rain of debris. He inspected his hand. Not even a scratch. Not even a flush to suggest its impact. He hadn't even coated it with chakra.

"Amazing!" Fukasaku crowed. "So this is what you have, super strength, endurance, regeneration, and whatever bloodlines you absorb in the future. That's one heck of a body."

"Too much flash. No finesse." Shima, Fukasaku's wife, cut in. "Your teamwork will be a problem. Your chakra too."

"What are you talking about woman? Naruto-chan's chakra is fine. Isn't that right, Naruto-chan?"

Naruto made a non-committal sound. He smiled at the bickering toad couple. It was good to see something never changed.

"Fine? Fine? Old geezer, have you lost your eyes?" Shima bellowed. "If Naruto-chan so much as take a step outside of this mountain, every sensor worth his salt in the land will be onto her like a hungry dog onto bone sticks. How is that fine?"

"You are the one who have to check your eyes. Don't confuse your sage's sense with a normal human." Fukasaku pointed a stick at Naruto, more specifically on the webs of red lines on his skin. "We can sense Naruto-chan because we are sages and this is mount Myobokuzan. If Naruto-chan leaves, this Fourteen-Point suppression seal would render her a ghost to all sensors. If they close their eyes, she will pass under their nose easily."

Naruto nodded. "That's true." He eyed the seal with appreciation. To seal the Kyuubi, his father needed only one, Gerotora. With this seal, it had taken fourteen Scroll Toads to complete it. Seven of them were inside his belly, with two squabbling non-stop about what a squeeze this new accommodation was. The other seven scattered all over the land, protected by the summon clan. And still it was not enough. He could still feel the feverish touch of the Jubi's chakra, not sealed away, simply asleep. That was worrying, given the fact that the environment of the sacred mountain alone should have suppressed any sensations of the sort. The Kyuubi never made a peep here. All of this worked to show the monstrous power sleeping inside him.

He turned back to the bickering couple, then held up a hand for them to see. The chakra that coated his palm and fingers wasn't the normal human blue, or even the light opal some of the summons had. The swirling colors of the chakra put a stop to the toad's argument. Shima inched toward him, inspected, then said to her husband.

"Do you see? I was right. It's extremely volatile."

Fukasaku was quite for a while. "I see." Then he eyed Naruto. "I thought it was only the quantity and quality of your chakra, but it seems even your chakra system is no longer the normal human yin-yang." The toad hummed as he examined Naruto's hand. "Blue for normal human. Red... well... we all know who that is. But this white..."

"It's nature chakra." Shima said, a touch of awe in her voice. "It's what's keeping the red in check. The blue is barely even there. If it weren't for it, Naruto-chan, you might have been taken over long before." Shima waved at their surroundings. "Look-it, Naruto-chan. Look how the leaves and trees wilted. Didn't you try to enter Sage mode earlier?"

"I did." And failed. A successful sage mode required an equal quantity blend of a shinobi's chakra and natural energy drawn from the environment. That wasn't going to happen with the black-hole that was the Jubi inside him.

"As I thought. You probably won't be able to attain Sage mode any more Naruto-chan." Naruto nodded to Shima's statement. The mama toad was the chakra specialist here. "On the other hand, you can maintain a semi-sage state almost permanently with daily meditation. With the demon chakra as leverage, you need not fear petrification from overdose. You can even stockpile natural energy for emergency."

"The downside is: it will decrease your combat potential." Said Fukasaku. "Without full Sage transformation, natural energy can only be used for defensive purposes: fortification of the body, healing, the likes. You will have to use your blue chakra for offensive techniques. But if you overdraw your blue, you risk being taken over by either white or red. Neither is a desirable outcome. As the old woman said, it's an extremely volatile system... one we still don't know much about."

Shima glared at her partner, but didn't immediately punish him for his 'old woman' comment, instead, she said. "Try a Rasengan, Naruto-chan. A pure blue one."

Naruto did as she requested. The Rasengan that came up was a deep blue instead of the off-white and purple-tinged Rasengan that he had summoned against Mo and Hanzo's flood trap. It was also very slow.

"I see." Shima commented. "Drawing out the blue takes time and leave up empty spaces for red and white."

"White for defence. Blue for offense. However, if you use up blue, you run the risk of being taken over. It's a delicate balance. You need to find a way to safely utilise red or your combat power will be halved. With your body, you can't be killed, but there are thousands of ways to cripple and imprison an immortal. And the slow speed. In real-time combat, that will be a big problem. By the time you call up a Rasengan, your enemy can counter-attack twice over. Not to mention, the Rasengan is the weakest attack. The higher calibres would probably require even more time." Fukasaku added in.

"In short, you should choose your battles wisely, avoid long battles that might dry up your blue reserves, decrease uses of high-chakra ninjutsu and focus more on taijutsu. Since white can be used for seals, your use of seals is limitless. The better your prior preparation is, the more advantage you will get out of white."

Naruto nodded to each statement. Everything the Toad couple said was true. He had verified it himself even before calling on them. Slow speed of attack, high risk if he tried to use demon chakra, the awkwardness of the new body. The disadvantages were about equal to the advantages. Naruto wasn't satisfied with just that. "I know of the problems..." He said slowly. "... and the risk. I have used red before..." Shima frowned. "... in the Senju fortress, but only to intimidate."

"Naruto-chan, you shouldn't..."

"A ninja makes the best use of what he has. That's what your future selves taught me." The toads blinked. " The Jubi is a powerhouse. I'm reaping all of the bad points and almost none of the good. That's like buying outdated ramen at diamond price. I'm not going to be satisfied with that. I'm going to find a way to use it and when I do, I'm going to use it so much I'm going to drain the Jubi him... er... herself dry." He extended his hands to Shima and Fukasaku. " I know it's risky but I'm asking you to help me... like your future self did."

There was a long pause before Fukasaku turned to his partner. "Well?"

Shima clucked. "Might as well. If we leave her on her own, she might blow up this whole mountain."

"Right, let's finish this. I still have dinner to cook." Shima rubbed her webbed hands together.

"You better be careful, Naruto-chan. This old toad runs a tight shift." Right after he said this, Fukasaku spread his feet in a classic lancing toad opening. "Real combat is the best training. Let's try out that body of yours for real. See how good it really is. We won't hold back. So fight for your life Naruto-chan."

Naruto grinned and assumed a defensive position. Apparently, a hundred years younger meant a far more aggressive toad couple. But that worked just fine for him. Thus, began his two week intensive training under the Toad couple.

* * *

At the same time the first blow was exchanged between Naruto and the toad couple, thousands of miles away, a person was counting his luck.

"One..." A single red-backed hawk flew in. "Three... ten... fifteen..." One by one, fifteen red-backed hawks flew in, each in a different window numbering from one to fifteen. Tora Emon stood in the center of the room and counted the hawks. His face sported a deep frown. He let his assistants take care of the hawks. Sixteen assistants for sixteen hawks. Each hawk carried a message encrypted in a code that only its specific caretaker and Tora himself can interpret.

Sixteen hawks and sixteen assistants, yet one of them was without his hawk, fidgeting anxiously in the corner.

"Sixteen... sixteen..." Tora mumbled, as if by spelling the number out loud, he could magically summon the missing sixteenth hawk.

"Lord... lord Tora." The sixteenth assistant stuttered once the other fifteen were finished.

"It's not coming." Tora mubled. "Something's happened." Then he said out loud to the waiting assistant. "The bird hasn't come for three weeks. We have to report this to Daimyo-sama." There was a deep guttural growl in Tora's voice, one that foretold trouble. "Woodsmen Ville zero-nine has gone off chart." The assistant paled. Daimyo-sama had a low threshold for incompetent subordinates, and this time, it was his neck on the line. The other fifteen stared at him, their eyes shining a mixture of pity and wicked delight.

"Prepare a recon team. I want to know what exactly happened there." Tora paced in front of the window where the sixteenth hawk was supposed to be. Thoughts raced in his head as fast as lightning. Woodsmen ville number zero-nine, what did he know of it? Location: Joeki range, west of Kokkyo, the greatest border citadel of Hi no Kuni. Protection: the Batu maze. Caretaker: Okabe and wife. Population: fifty-seven including two children. It was there that Tora's thoughts froze.

Children!

The face of a woman came into his mind. The one and biggest trouble in the eight years Woodsmen Ville project was in effect. She was called Nami, a runaway slave who had stumbled into Woodsmen Ville 09 eight years ago when they had just started and the protective maze was still unfinished. They had let her stay, not out of kindness but out of the necessity of keeping their secret. If they let her go, who knew what ears she would spew the news and location of the strange lumberjack town to.

At that time, no one had thought much of the slave girl who had crawled into the village feverish and half-dead, but in the next nine months, Nami quickly became their biggest security breech. The girl was pregnant. Her child was born with reversed color eyes, the bloodline limit of one of Ame tribes. Hozo... Hizo something.

For this to happen, there were only two possible explanations. The first: the child was a product from a forced coupling. Understandable, since Nami was a lone, defenceless woman. Yet that hypothesis seemed flimsy once they took in the strict marital and procreation policy blood-line clans imposed on their members. For such clans, their children were also their treasured weapons. For them to let their stud members go loose on defenceless slaves like that... almost unthinkable. The second: the child was legitimate... which meant that Nami was a spy sent undercover amongst their midst. She hadn't known she was pregnant before taking on the mission, and this child, once born, had brought failure to its mother.

Two hypothesises. Which one was true? One way to solve it was to kill both mother and child. However, there were ninja tribes who put secret seals onto their agent's bodies. Once the agent died, the seal would release, noting the tribe leaders of the agent's position. If Nami was a spy, then killing her might be a bad decision. On the hand, letting her live would mean letting a possible mole walk freely among them. Impossible.

Eight years ago, taking all into consideration, they had decided to keep Nami under close watch. They had kept her poor, single, and completely dependent on them, so that no matter which hypothesis was true, nothing of Woodsmen Ville would ever get out.

Now, eight years later, just a short while before their plan came to its end, _this _happened.

Daimyo-sama had spent billions of Ryo into building a whole network of Woodsmen Villes, weaving lies over lies, making up the disguise of simple drug smugglers and patiently waiting a long eight years just to see his plan coming into fruition _now_. To have anything threaten its success was... unacceptable.

"Prepare my horse." Tora ordered. "I will go there myself." His assistants nodded and scurried off. Tora gazed out the window at the open skies. To leave the capital now, at the time when secret wars were waged under a peaceful surface... was risky. However, this plan was too important to let fail.

In order to protect Fire daimyo's lineage, Kokkyo _must_ fall.

* * *

The first time the orphans dared to speak to Naruto after their ploy to kill him was at lunch, the eighth day since they arrived in Mt. Myobokuzan. It was Mo who broke the self-imposed silence. The girl looked at him over the table and timidly asked.

"Wh... what happened to your eyes?"

Naruto's eyes, at the time of asking, were rimmed in blotches of black and purple. He had lost three teeth from a glancing blow and had grown them back in about twenty seconds. The fracture in his pelvis bone was knitting itself back. His left hand, which was currently in a cast, needed a bit more time to heal. Naruto held his lunch bowl with his right hand, and answered Mo in between his chewing.

"I lost a fight." He said simply.

"Lost a fight!" Fukasaku laughed at his remark. "Really, Naruto-chan? Lost a fight! As I remembered it, you forced both of us into a corner and carved out half of the mountain. We had to use our million-year technique to push you back! Lost a fight! Kami-sama, I didn't think you'd go that far when we told you not to hold back."

"Oh you, leave the poor girl alone!" Shima put a bowl in front of her partner and silenced him, then she turned to the orphans. "Eat up, children! I made these especially for you."

The orphans eyed their lunch, a giant's feast of fried lake flies, cricket soup, roach sushi, and various types of insect.

"Delish!" Fukasaku cheered before digging in.

"I... I would rather eat salamanders." Hanzo murmured under his breath.

"Trust me, you don't wanna try salamanders. They have tough skin... and way too many scales. These are good for your health. Lots of nutrition." Naruto commented as he nibbled on a steamed grasshopper's legs. This gate he'd past ten years ago. "It's better than it looks. It's like eating your greens. You'll get used to it."

Lunch crawled through slowly, from early noon to late. At the end, Naruto looked out through the window where sunlight streamed down the courtyard like melted honey. A gentle breeze carried the scent of dying autumn all the way into the toad couple's stone house. 'It's about time.' He thought before placing his tea cup down the table.

"In five days, I will leave this place."

The orphans stiffened at his remark. They looked at each other, then at him.

"Naruto-chan, maybe now is not the time." Shima, guessing what he was going to do, admonished him. But Naruto ignored her. Instead, he focused his attention on the orphans.

"You have two choices: to stay here, or to come with me."

"Naruto!"

"Shima-san, it's pass time that we deal with this. One of us is dead... because I wasn't clear to them the first time." That stopped the toad lady in her track. "Hanzo, Hinamori..." The boy and girl jerked at their names. "... we were originally strangers. We _are_ still strangers now. I had no reason to care for you. And you had no reason to trust me. Yet we walked together."

Mo gave a tiny nod. True. At first, she was the most reluctant to leave home, but home was just a pile of burnt wood now. Their families were all dead, if they didn't follow this strange woman, they too would die, if not of starvation, then of being eaten by wild animals.

"This place is called Mt. Myobokuzan, a sacred place and the home of the toad spirit beasts." Shima and Fukasaku didn't react to Naruto's 'beast' comment. To these two farmer children who had never even heard of the summon clans, they really were spirit beasts. "They are my good friends. If you stay here, they'll take care of you. It's not a normal life, definitely not the life you'd have among other humans, but it's a good life nonetheless. You won't go hungry, and whatever you want to learn, they will teach you. They'll be your friends and your parents. There's no better place for you than here."

Naruto paused momentarily to let it sink in, to let the orphans take stock of the abundant food, the peaceful village, and the rich fabric they were clothed with, all the signs of an easy life if they chose to stay.

"Hanzo..." The boy looked him in the eye. "... ninja life isn't what you imagine. There's no glamour in it, only horror. The death of your sister..." An edge appeared in the red and black of the boy's eyes, fragile and fierce all at once. "... was my fault. I hide things from both of you. Because you were children, and because this is my curse, _my personal curse_. However, if you choose to walk with me, you'll see far more horrifying sights than that night. In the ninja world, there are those far more terrifying than I. They will not be deterred just because you're a child. If you're not strong enough, then the only mercy you can wish for is a quick death. If you cannot bear it, if you lose your calm and run at the first trouble... like you did that night, you'll put not only yourself, but also your friends in danger."

He paused again. Despite the sunny afternoon outside, inside the house, the air was as cold as mid winter. In the mind of two children, the events of that stormy night in Joeki range played itself over and over.

"I will go to Kokkyo. I have business to attend to... people to kill." Shima winced at his blunt honesty but even she stayed silent. There was no point in sugar-coating what he was now. "If you choose to walk with me, I will teach you all I know. I will make you strong. In the ninja world, there are no more than ten as strong as I. However, once you go down this path, there is _No. Turning. Back_. You will either grow stronger... or you will _die_. Do you understand?"

Hanzo looked down at his lap, silent. Mo sniffed once.

"Do you understand?" He repeated, harsher this time. The orphans nodded. Only then did he relent. Naruto leaned back against the cool stone wall, picked up his tea cup and sipped calmly as he waited for their replies. Fukasaku clucked his tongue, but said nothing.

Opposite Naruto, Mo trembled once, then looked him straight in the eye.

"Take me with you." She said. Her voice was the voice of a child, yet it held a hard determination that wasn't there before.

"Are you sure? I won't ask again."

"I want to see the world." She explained. Just a month ago, Mo 'Hinamori' could not imagine a place like this... or a time when she would sit at the same table, eat the same food, and talk about the weathers with toads... with talking toads! Yet here she was. Just a month ago, Mo was just an ordinary girl, the daughter of a woodcutter and his wife. Her big dream was to be the first professional seamstress of the village. But her brush with death had changed everything.

The image of that night was carved into her very soul; she, Hanzo and his sister hiding behind a bush and peeking at the strange woman named Naruto, naked and luminous under the moonlight. Mo had never seen something so beautiful... yet so terrifying at the same time. Then Death had come and laid a kiss on her forehead.

The next morning when she woke up in Naruto's arms, coughing up mud and water and looking up an egg-gray skies, hearing the relief in Naruto's voice – "You're alive!" – she knew she was reborn.

"I... I want..." Mo struggled to put her feeling to words. "... I want... to live." She looked down at the pretty blue and pink dress the toads had gifted her, then through the window at Mt. Myobokuzan. This village was very beautiful, more beautiful than anything Mo could imagine... but it was only a piece... a tiny piece of the real world outside, a place filled with both pain and wonder, dreams and nightmares, virgins and harlots... a place just like this ninja woman. It was a world Mo had never been to.

"I want to see the world. Take me with you. Show it to me." She turned back at Naruto. "Teach me... how to be a ninja."

"Alright." Naruto said simply. "What about you, Hanzo?"

Hanzo didn't reply. The orphan boy was still for about a minute, then, without saying a word, without looking at anybody in the room, he stood up and walked out the door.

* * *

Five days passed like the blink of an eye. On the morning of the fifth day, Naruto went ahead with Gamabunta. They teleported to the valley bottom where Naruto had crash-summoned the toad boss and made their way up the mountain from there.

"Damn! I can see how you got lost in this place." Gamabunta grumbled as he hopped from one stone edge to another. "It's practically choked up with fog in here. I can't even see where I'm going to land."

Naruto hummed absentmindedly to Gamabunta's complaint. This mountain range was thousands of miles long and structured in such a way that it was hard to tell which direction was flat plain. If they didn't have a map or a local guide, they could get lost in here for years. However, today, they weren't looking for a way out. They were looking for a way up.

"There!" Naruto shouted as he spotted his target. Gamabunta skidded to a stop. His mountainous body plummeted to the ground with a booming sound.

"Here?"

"Yep." Naruto jumped down to the ruined harbour and made a beeline to the pile of wood logs left behind.

"I see. They drop the wood into the river and let the water carry it to the city." Gamabunta observed. "But that's for wood. You can't be thinking about riding it out of this place. A mountain like this, there must be waterfalls on the way."

"There aren't." Naruto said simply. He knocked along the length of a wood log, found a hollow inside, and punched through it. "Check this out." A stream of white powder poured out from the hole he made.

"What's that?" Gamabunta sniffed at the powder.

"It's called Yaba Ice, a recreational drug for humans. Where I come from, it's been outlawed even for hardcore drug lords. It gives one heck of a high, but prolonged use leads to physical and mental deterioration and all kinds of mutations... too much trouble for what it's worth. There are better stuffs out there." Then he abandoned the logs and gestured at the river. "They hollowed out half of the wood and hid the drug in there. This stuff doesn't take well to moisture. Heavy side down, hollow side up, so that the water doesn't get in. It's fine if it's just a one-way-down river, but waterfalls would bust it. Hence, for this river branch, there can't be any."

"I see."

Naruto inspected the harbour and chose out a flat part of land. "Drop the beacon." He said to the toad boss. Gamabunta whipped out a scroll from his vest and drop it. The moment the scroll touch the ground, it dissipated into hundred of glyph lines. It would do exactly as it was named, a beacon for summon beasts to teleport to.

"But... I don't understand." Gamabunta mumbled after a few seconds of thought. "If you knew this, then why didn't you take this route the first time around?"

Naruto paused. The heavy drug running in his blood had robbed him of all high-intensity emotion. Yet in its absence, he still felt a great blankness. "There was a baby." Who wouldn't survive if he had taken this route. But he left that part out and said only the first.

They waited in silence. After ten minutes, blue light shone from the glyph, then the toad couple popped into the clearing in a puff of smoke. Trailing behind Shima and Fukasaku were Mo and someone who shouldn't be there.

"Hey, hey, Na-chan. This little guy has something to say to you." Shima nudged a red-faced Hanzo towards him. The boy took a few steps then stopped to glare at his feet. Since lunch five days ago, he hadn't seen hair nor hide of the boy. Logically, he had assumed that the orphan boy had chosen to stay. Understandable. For a seven years old child like Hanzo, what happened for the past month must have been a great trauma. Hanzo probably blamed the death of his sister on him. Naruto didn't mind. Keeping Hanzo here under the watch of Shima and Fukasaku probably was the best choice. Obviously, he didn't think he'd see the boy today.

"Why are you here?" He asked gently. Hanzo peeked at him from under his dirty blonde bangs, then timidly showed him his hand. Naruto blinked at the sight of Hanzo's palms and finger, which were covered in blistering red welts, an obvious sign of the harsh training Hanzo had done for the past five days. He recognized these welts. They must have come from the kitchen knife the boy still kept.

Hanzo withdrew his hands, then said. "Will you take me with you?"

"May I know why?"

Hanzo paused, then looked down at his feet as if he couldn't bear Naruto's imploring gaze. "I'm..." The boy started. "I'm weak." He clenched his hands then opened them again. "My mama died. My sister died. My village died... I couldn't do anything." Then he looked up at Naruto. "... I know you have something to do with it. You know something. You hid it from us but I can see it. I'm not stupid..." A deep frown drew itself across his face. The next sentences left Hanzo's mouth slowly, as if each word was agonizing to utter "... But... even if I get the truth from you, I'm still a kid. I'm still too weak to do anything about it. I... I do not have the right to ask the truth from you. From today, I will follow you and I will learn from you. Only when I overcome you, I will have the right to ask for the truth. And if you had anything to do with it... then... _**your head is mine**_."

Naruto calmly nodded. He studied the hard lines on the face of the seven year old child. The last of childhood had left the boy's pale freckled face. In the upheaval of that night before they arrived at Mt. Mybokuzan, the child named Hanzo had died, and what was left was, perhaps, the beginning of the Salamander, the ruthless leader of Rain. Naruto sighed. This too was his doing. Right at this moment, he did not know whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. Only time would tell he supposed.

"What a brat!" Gamabunta grumbled above them. "You're talking as if Na-chan is your enemy. Why would Na-chan raise with her own hands a ninja who will be after her head? What a ludicrous bastard."

The toad boss moved his giant frame as if to shoo the boy orphan away, but Naruto held out a hand to stop him. "It's alright, boss." Then he patted Hanzo's head. Hanzo leaned into the warmth of his hand, a hard child but still a child nonetheless. "That's the spirit. Now you're talking like a ninja."

He waited for Mo to join them then turned to the toad boss. "We will need something sturdy to go downstream. Give us a hand here boss." With one heave, Gamabunta pushed three logs of wood from the pile. Right on cue, Shima and Fukasaku hopped on top of them. "Working time!" Fukasaku crowed as he and his wife spat out globs of toad glue. In no time at all, the three wood logs were glued into a makeshift raft. Gamabunta nudged the raft once to test then pushed it in a slanting line into the river.

Naruto carried Hanzo first onto the floating raft, then Mo, careful not to let cold water touch the children. On the river surface, there were already thin slats of ice. The freezing cold was no problem to Naruto's reinforced body, but if one of the children were to catch a cold here on this tiny raft, without any medicine, they probably wouldn't survive.

"Alright, kids, it's time to say goodbye." Naruto said after they finished loading the last pack of dried food and winter coat onto the raft.

"Not so fast, Na-chan. We have something for you." Shima suddenly cut in. "Wait a minute. They should be here soon." Right after she said this, the glyph on land lighted up once again and in popped two tiny frogs, one red, one yellow. "Augh... what a shithole this place is! Are you sure we got the right direction? I told you we need to turn left. Turn left, I said!" The red frog squawked.

"Aw, shut up. You hurt my ears. This is the right place." The yellow frog answered.

"Aki! Zaki!" Shima yelled, then turned back to Naruto. "I'm sorry. They aren't usually like this."

"Come on, children. Come and introduce yourself to your new partner." Fukasaku waved to the pair of frogs who hopped right up to them. Naruto eyed the approaching frog's colorful coat. In the animal world, colors meant danger. These pair of toad, the red one was as freshly-spilt blood, the yellow one as glaring as camp fire. They were clearly among the top most poisonous animals.

"Partner?"

"That's right, Na-chan." Shima explained. "This is Aki." She pointed to the red frog. "And this is Zaki, her twin brother. They are yin-yang frogs and our resident experts on poison and genjutsu. They're a bit green but your experience should compensate for that."

"Na-chan. We know you're strong. However, even you are not invincible. Your weakness is genjutsu and we still do not know what effects mind-control ninjutsu would have on you. Even a partial control of your body might mean great danger. Aki and Zaki will help you balance out your combat power." Fukasaku reasoned. "Furthermore, you have to take care of these two children. You can't always be with them, especially in situations that one of them is lost or they split. Yin-yang frog twins are born with the ability to communicate mentally even over long distance. As long as one of them is with the children and one of them is with you, you won't have to worry."

The second Fukasaku finished, the frog twins leaped onto the raft excitedly. Zaki hopped right onto Naruto's shoulder and snapped a neat salute. "Hey, boss. Glad to meet you at last. So when are we going to kick butts?" His sister, Aki, on the other hand, headed to the children. "Hey, little mumus, what up? Damn. They look tasty. Can I have a bite?" The orphans started as she approached them. Young as they were, even they knew the danger in the tiny frog's skin. "Aww, come one. I was joking. Totally!" Aki pouted and chased the boy and girl in circles.

Above the children's squeals, Shima carried on the conversation. "Between them, they can emit seventy-two types of poison and seventy-two types of cure. Each of the poison can be mixed with each other so the combinations are almost endless. Aki keeps most of the poison, whereas Zaki possess most of the cures. I'm sure you'll find uses for that."

"In terms of Genjutsu, Aki is better at offensive techniques, and Zaki defensive. However, the toad clan genjutsu technique are best used in a duo, so be careful to choose which one to use." Fukasaku continued where his wife left off. "Neither of them are sensors. However, within a sphere of ten meters, Zaki can hold a barrier against most enemies, though it drains him quickly. They are quite fragile in physical strength. Take care of them, Na-chan."

For a few seconds, Naruto was silent. "It sounds like... they were trained specifically for me. Their abilities complimented mine perfectly."

"That's right, Naruto. Aki and Zaki were trained since birth to be your companions. We knew you would come. Remember, Naruto, you are not a lone avenger anymore. You hold all of our lives in your hand now."

Naruto said nothing to that. He only nodded his thanks. The past weeks in Mt. Myobokuzan, many times he'd tried to ask the Thousand Year Toad Sage about the future, about the consequences of his actions, about the new future... if it was better than the one he'd come from. To all of these questions, the Sage was silent. But now, looking at the preparations the Toad clan had gifted him before sending him off, his mission would be a hard one. Naruto smiled at the thought. Well, that was just exactly what he wanted. Nothing good was ever won easily. The foretold difficulties only meant that he was fighting for a worthy future.

He looked up at the orange afternoon skies of Joeki range once more before saying his thanks and his goodbye to the toad clan. Then, with a nudge of his oar, he pushed the raft offshore. The water carried them away, into mid-river.

* * *

Two days after Naruto's departure, the Slug clan boss, Katsuyu also took her leave. But before she left for her home mountain, Katsuyu had one last meeting with the Great Toad Sage. The Sage received her in his tea room.

"Child, you have something in your mind?" The Great Toad smiled amicably over his steaming tea cup.

Katsuyu paused, for a moment not knowing what to do. She had meant to drop in for a quick goodbye, then get out right away. She was uncomfortable in the presence of the Great Toad Sage. People said that he was senile. Katsuyu had believed it, but that was before meeting him in person. In the few weeks that she was the toad's guest, Katusyu had quickly discovered that the Great Toad was not senile at all, not at all. He was simply lost in the many futures he could see.

"It's about Naruto-chan, isn't it?" The Great Toad pushed, far more astute than others credited him.

Katsuyu nodded helplessly. What was the point in lying to one who could see the future? The toad in front of her was the picture of old age: wrinkle skin, foggy eyes, each movement of his body as weak as a kitten. Yet a hundred years ago, in the time that Yueh-sama was the slug leader and not Katsuyu, it was this same toad who called for a meeting with all summon clans. "A hundred years from now..." The Toad had announced to his fellow summons. "... A human will hold our lives in her hands. If we do not help her, all will end in total destruction. From now on, we must plan ahead, and do all we can to take control of her."

Timidly, Katsuyu leaned forward and looked down at the Great Toad's prophet basin. The water inside the stone basin was a cloudy blue and held an unfathomable depth that should be impossible for its ordinary vessel. Reflected in the water was the image of a human boy, dark hair, one dark eye and one blue. Hashirama Senju.

"He's acting exactly as I've foreseen. He's chasing after Naruto-chan." The Toad nodded delightfully. "The him from other futures had always lacked a sense of self and wandered through their life not knowing what they really wanted. Now that he had met someone who could possibly pull him from that. He obviously is not going to let go." A satisfied smile drew itself across his gnarly face.

Katsuyu recoiled. More and more she wanted to leave this tea house. Now she understood why the Toad Sage wasn't the most popular among his brethren summons. His power scared them. To look destiny in the face and have it look back at you. To feel so keenly how insignificant one was in the wheels of history. To struggle with all one had and know that in the end, they all had to succumb to this thing called fate... to this bowl of dishwashing water before the Great Toad. Perhaps it was for this reason that the Snake clan hated them so.

"Now, child, your worries."

Of course. Katsuru inhaled. How could she go against those who could see the future?

"I worry about Naruto-san." She began. He nodded in acknowledgement. Katsuyu swallowed. "I think Naruto-san is confused... no... lost... no... in denial. Yes, that it. In denial."

"About?"

"Her gender." As soon as the word left her mouth, Katsuyu regretted having said it. How stupid. Here they were, planning to save the future, and she was worrying over how Naruto-san viewed herself. She consoled herself with the fact that she was a doctor. It was only natural for doctors to worry about a patient's ills, mental and physical both. But the Sage, instead of laughing at her trivial concerns, merely nodded.

"In... in our clan..." Katsuyu continued, somehow unable to stop the words coming out of her mouth. "...our young go through a formation phase where they choose to be either a seeder or a nurturer... or to be both. We slugs are hermaphrodites. We don't have a fixed gender. We choose to identify ourselves as he or she merely out of convenience for other species. Naruto-san is ... going through something like it..."

"It's ... different for humans." She continued after a long pause. "Humans put great importance on their gender identity. Their personalities are shaped from birth based on their genders. Their very society itself is built upon the foundation of their gender. Even though we know Naruto-san used to be male, we don't see it as strange because we've never seen her male body and we are different species from her. For Naruto, it must have been greatly traumatic."

With a flourish, Katsuyu produced a glass jar from her bag. Inside the jar was a single human hand.

"This is Naruto-san's."

"Oh." The Great Toad studied the severed human hand.

"She cut it off herself and gave this to me. She wanted me to study it... to... to harvest it. Toad-sama, no healthy-minded individual, regardless of their species, would ever think of harvesting their own body. Even hive-mind creatures like ants or bees have self-preservation drives."

"She will do something drastic you mean?"

"No, I don't think so. Naruto-san has more mental discipline than that. However, the fact that Naruto-san gave this to me implies... that she's viewing her body as a tool. Not a body, just a tool... or a beast to subdue. In their formation phase, our young go through an adaptive cycle of anxiety, honeymoon, shock, mental isolation, and acceptance integration. It takes years for this cycle to finish in full adaptation. Naruto-san, on the other hand, has refused it all. She's detached her body from her mind by viewing it as nothing more than a tool. She doesn't speak about it. She thinks of herself as male. She probably still refers to herself as 'he' in her head. A conflict between the mind and the body, this coupled with her survivor's guilt... it... it's simply not healthy." Katsuyu finished weakly.

The Great Toad nodded, silent. Katsuyu felt embarrassment crept up on her. She must have sounded silly. " Fur... furthermore..." She picked up again on a last bid to lend more credits to her concerns. "I think, because of her denial, Naruto-san is ignoring what her female body implies."

"What does it imply?"

"Danger." Katsuyu stated, more confident now that the toad was paying more attention. "We all know that the Jubi means danger. But how? And what kind? We know little about it aside from its power. Does it have a mind? Does it fear? What does it want? The legend says that the Jubi is the ultimate beast of destruction, but if so, then Naruto-san's female body now is illogical. Are you following me so far, Toad-sama?

The Toad nodded.

"In our studies, we learnt that for most species, the males are the fighter-defender. High muscle density, high 'fight' hormone, territorial instinct, low self-preservation, brain pattern geared towards solving immediate problems, these are what nature equips the male of the species with. In most species, the male form is designed for combat. Therefore, if the Jubi is a simple beast of destruction, then Naruto-san's female form simply could not be."

"I see."

"However, if we set aside what the legend said and assume that the Jubi is driven by an urge all creatures have: survival instinct, then it makes sense. In contrast with the male, the female of _**all**_ species are programmed to preserve themselves first and foremost. Females are the lifeline of a species, in charge of reproduction and protecting the young. Their physiology is designed for adaptation and survival. Their preservant mentality means that they can endure hardships that will cripple males. Their senses are far more developed to recognize danger signals. In herd-structured species, the males are genetic soldiers to protect brood queens. In short, in a biological perspective, male forms are only short-term, whereas female forms are ideal for long-term survival."

With one tentacle, Katsuyu pointed at the Toad's prophet basin. "However, in my opinion, the key point of this transformation lies with him."

"The Senju boy?"

Katsuyu nodded. "Think about it." She reasoned. "This boy is a direct descendant of the younger brother who possessed the power to destroy the Jubi. Naruto-san's original body didn't survive, only her spirit did. The moment of their first contact is also the moment when the Jubi was at its weakest, right after the trauma of time travel and during the creation of the new body. If it were you or me..." She gestured between them. "... if we were to meet our mortal enemy at our near-death moment and unable to flee, what would we do?"

"Camouflage." The Toad answered.

"Correct. We'd try to hide. We'd try to disguise ourselves. It's a natural response. Some animals even use it as their sole defence system. The chameleon clan for example. In Naruto-san's case, a female appearance is the perfect disguise. To a normal human male, other males are competition, females are opportunity. Lone wandering males are seen as a threat to a group because they tend to encroach on the pre-existing group's territory, power, or food supply. On the other hand, lone wandering females are usually welcomed and accepted because they reinforce the pre-existing group's power. Humans call it war, I think. All the same, large-scale violent warring is only done by human males. Very similar to lion's pride. Individually, it's unthinkable for a male to kill a fertile female of the same group. She might be ravaged, yes, but killing her is equal to wasting reproductive opportunity. Of course, there is always a deviation, but even that deviation is miniscule compared to the total population. Naruto-san might not like to think about it, but when she was first brought into this time line, she was surrounded by almost all males for a period of several months. Her female appearance might have been what tipped the scale to her favour."

All of a sudden, the Toad Sage busted into booming laughter. "Katsuyu-chan" he said after the mirth had subsided. "If Na-chan heard what you said, she wouldn't be happy."

"True," Katsuyu demurred, "But Toad-sama, we are animals. That is fact. We don't deny our nature or what lies in our subconscious... no matter how crude it may sound. Of course, humans think of themselves as different." Katusyu shook her head. "What I'm trying to say is... Toad-sama... the Jubi is far more than a simple beast. The female vessel it crafted for Naruto-san has all the signs of a highly intelligent creature. Taking advantage of the enemy's basic reproductive drive and sociocultural behaviour, using the enemy's psychological state to better itself, choosing long-term over short-term, those are all higher mental functions. I... I just can't calm myself whenever I think of what sort of danger is inside Naruto-san... and she doesn't seem to want to acknowledge it."

"I see." The Toad nodded. "You were right to be concerned. But, if you're so worried, then why didn't you talk to Na-chan about this?"

"Because... because... there's no way Naruto-san doesn't know about it. Naruto-san's knowledge is a hundred years more updated than mine. It's for her knowledge, not her yin chakra, that the slug clan entered into contract with her. Naruto-san must have come to the same conclusion long before me. The only reason she remains oblivious is because she's subconsciously blocking out everything that is a threat to her identity." Katsuyu shook her head helplessly. "As long as she holds onto her past identity, she won't accept her new body as any more than a simple tool. She'll start to seek refuge in an infantile genderless state. I... that's just not healthy at all. As a doctor, I cannot be unconcerned."

The Great Toad bobbed his head to the sound of Katsuyu's rant then calmly sipped on his tea once she finished. Katsuyu cocked one ear and listened to the squeals of playing toadlings outside. "Do not fret, child," said the toad.

Fret? Katsuyu frowned. Did the toad not understand one word of what she said? Did she have to delve even further into her own suspicions? If the Jubi was intelligent... human-level intelligent, who knew what it would do inside Naruto-san? Sure, there was the seal, but Katsuyu doubted even the Toad's master creation would hold out for long against a being of such magnitude. The next time they met, Katsuyu wondered, would it still be Naruto-san inside that flesh vessel, or would it be something else?

"Everything is as we planned." Of course, Katsuyu realized with a start. The Toad could see the future. What were her baseless suspicions compared to his absolute clairvoyance? "Leaving Naruto-chan with the Senju clan was the right decision. My future self did everything as I've foreseen. Sabotaging the ninja war so that Konohagakure was destroyed, secretly pushing events so that Sakura and Hikaru Uzumaki were murdered, letting the summoned clans be massacred by the tailed beasts, we have sacrificed so much just to bring Naruto Uzumaki to this point in time... exactly where we want her."

The Toad held up one hand. Smoke rose from the basin below and curled into two human figures. "My prophecy stands. The destined child will both destroy and revolutionize the ninja world. Half of it is already fulfilled, _now_ the latter half... Katsuyu." The slug princess jerked at her name. "We must be prepared to do _**whatever it takes**_... to ensure our future, our children's future. This is the reason why Gamabunta was not told the full plan and you were. It's the reason Yueh resigned her post to you twenty years early... because Naruto knew you from her future... because Naruto trusts you. Child, do you understand?"

"I do, Toad-sama." Katsuyu said quietly.

"You must not hesitate, Katsuyu. If Naruto knew, she would approve too. The mission must be completed at all costs." Then the Toad Sage gazed sombrely at the smoke figures he'd created and mumbled to himself. "It's all up to them now—Naruto-chan and the Senju boy. He no longer sees her as a stranger and she no longer sees him as a mythical figure. It is the premise needed to fulfil the prophecy. Our future will be born from them. However, it is too soon for them to meet now. Our agents will do all they can to keep them apart until the time is ripe." He squeezed his hand as if to make a statement. "So that we all may live, so that we all may have a future, Naruto Uzumaki _**must**_ die at the hands of Hashirama Senju."

For animals, Katsuyu thought, the human's concept of evil did not exist. When an animal was hungry, it ate. When an animal was weak, it died. Human's morals had no place in the natural balance. Thus, the things she was feeling now, in the presence of the Great Toad, must also be human in nature. Human feelings was a bad thing for a beast to have, Katsuyu decided as she left the tea house. She didn't like them at all.

* * *

The first sign that they were nearing Kokkyo appeared five days after their departure. On the left shore, several corpses sprawled along the bank. One of them had drifted off and was floating face down in the water.

"Damn." Aki muttered as Naruto steered their raft close.

"Fresh killed." Naruto declared after scanning the floating corpse. Several arrows jutted out from its back. He pulled one out and checked their design. Military. His stomach somersaulted the moment he recognized this. In a split second, he made his decision.

"We're getting off." He said as he lifted Hanzo and Mo from the raft and waded up the bank.

"What? Here? With who knows what killed those people?" Came the protest but Naruto shook his head. "They use arrows. Military design. There could be thousands around. We'd be sitting ducks in that river."

Naruto studied their surroundings. Vast open grass plain. A few trees dotted the horizon. The sun had just come up, the air cold. No fog. In the far distance, he made out the silhouette of a colossus city. Kokkyo.

The children hopped off once he was on land, their faces pale and taut with tension. "Wh... what do we do if we meet them?"

"Stay calm, and stick to the trees. Aki, Zaki, be prepared." He didn't tell them to put up a genjutsu. Genjutsu might be useful in battles and in complicated combat environment but in this open field, the chakra spike of a powerful illusion would draw out sensory-type enemies instead. He bent down, clawed at the ground, then smeared mud on the children's faces. "We are just normal travellers. They should want nothing to do with us." Unless they were robbers, but saying that now wouldn't help. "Hanzo, don't let them see your eyes."

They made a straight line towards the city on the horizon. After half a day walking, something appeared. A stream of people trudged towards the same direction. Men, women, children, the young, the old, rich and poor. Some rode on horses and caravans. Some walked on foot. Some crawled. The women carried their children in cloth straps and followed their husband's lead. A cacophony of moans and cries rose from the human herd. Among them, one stood out: the screams of a man. Naruto saw him first. He was half-naked, the skin on his torso red raw from a third-degree burn. His voice was full of rage and despair and he was screaming one word over and over at the top of his lungs.

"Uchiha! Uchihaaa!"

* * *

**End Chapter 6**

**End I. Eva Luna**

* * *

**Question**: Do you prefer long chapters and slow updates, or short chapters but fast updates? Several people brought this question up to me. Initially, I kept the chapter long to maintain the pulse and feel of the story, especially in atmosphere-heavy parts like Eva Luna. These chapters took a toll on me because they are usually so intense that they drag me down with them (fairly dark and oppressive chapters like 4, 5). Shorter chapters would probably put less pressure on me. But I want to hear what readers think about it before I change my update pace. So let me know which you prefer and why.

One concept art of Hashirama and his new 'eye' in this chapter.

* * *

Some people complained about the darker and more insane aspects of Tis Femina (weird, they said). I wonder what they thought they were going to read when they came in. Gender bender, to me, is a psychological issue, a fear of lost identity, of being swallowed by an alien sexuality. By its very nature, it's not a topic most people like. It touches on too many raw nerves. I never meant to write a popular story. I wanted to write a story that stays true to the issue, to what I think gender bender, when taken seriously, could be.

Here's a big surprise: the xenomorph monster of Alien series was designed to invoke that kind of fear (you didn't know that, did you?) There are books written on that. I've warned you since chapter 2, 3. If you didn't listen to me and pushed forward, you have only yourself to blame.

Seriously, people, what do you think I made this a gender bender for? (Let me guess. To pair Naruto off with _'someone'_. Am I right?)

Anyway, to the people who enjoy this story, happy reading guys.


	7. Chapter 7 part 1: Rat's City

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto.

Beta: Michelle T., Kevin C.

Part II: Uchiha

II. Kiiroi Kami

**Chapter 7 (part 1):**** Rat's City**

"The rat ran away from men's city of light, down the drain bars, down the waste pipes. And there, deep under men's city of light, among the trash and the filth, the rat was king."

* * *

Stone giants guarded the gate of Kokkyo.

Bishamonten on the right, Hachiman on the left, the statues of war gods proudly proclaimed samurai ownership over the city. The gate itself was a monstrous thing. At one hundred feet wide and two hundred feet tall, it easily swallowed the sea of refugees that had converged before its doors. On top of the gate, a bronze plate glinted in the afternoon sun. The words read.

Kokkyo-14

"Somebody is reaaallllyyy rich," said the toad perching on Naruto's right shoulder, Aki.

"What'd you expect? It's supposed to be a samurai city. They're rich bastards," said the toad on his left shoulder, Zaki.

_Rich or not, they know what they're doing_. Thought Naruto as he studied the city defence, a usual affair of stone walls, towers, and sentries. An old trick, for sure, but one that worked.

The guards in the front yelled "Next". The people ambled on in neat orderly lines. On one side were merchants with rich robes and caravans filled with goods, on the other the poor, the lost, the runaways. The group Naruto had first joined were firmly ensconced in the ranks of the refugee. Slowly, under the order of the gate guards, they marched head-on towards the gate.

"So what's the plan, boss?" Zaki asked softly, his frog voice disguised under the cacophony of the crowds.

Plan? What plan? "Get in. Stay low. Build," he said simply. Shima was right. These two were green.

"What about that guy?" Aki gestured at the burnt man. He crawled a few rows behind them. His exhaustion had stripped him of his voice, but every once in a while, they could still hear a drawn, quiet moan from him. "Aren't we trying to get to the Uchiha? He's a lead, in't he?"

"Uchiha?" Hanzo perked up beside Naruto, face full of questions. He shushed the boy, pulling the cloak down on over his reversed-color eyes. "Stay down. It's too early for you to start asking." He turned his attention back to the frogs. "It's useless. It's clear that he's lost it." He nodded at the man. "Classic case of post-trauma. The only survivor of a village hit by the Uchiha, we won't get much out of him. And there're way too many people here. We don't want to draw attention to ourselves."

"Oohh. I get it," Aki cooed.

"Even if he had something. I doubt we can act on it..."

"Next," the guards yelled. The lines moved. The first rows of refugees disappeared, swallowed by the steel gates. Double-doors. Naruto observed. Inside the gate, in a space within the wall, was an exam room, locked on both sides. Those who seek asylum, those who came for a new life, those who brought their riches, it didn't matter. Each group of incomers were thoroughly searched.

"Next." Naruto stepped forward. Two rows in front of him, another group were ushered in.

That was some heavy security, a big plus point to the samurai who ran this city, and another sign pointing towards current unrest in the region. But then again, should he be surprised? This was supposed to be one of the biggest warring eras in the history of Fire, and Kokkyo was, according to Mo, the largest border city in the Westland. It was only logical that its defensive measures were top-notch.

"You two and I... and possibly some other toads. That's all we've got in terms of combat strength. Other than that, we've got nothing. No intel network. No resources. No connection. Good ninja never work blind, Aki. That..." Naruto nodded at the city gate. "... is our goal, right now. Get in, stay low, then slowly build up a base. Haste doesn't help the mission."

Right on time, the guards yelled at the row directly in front. "Next."

"Waa..." Mo breathed as she craned her neck, looking up at the towering city wall. From this vantage point, a few feet from the gate and right at the foot, the wall was as tall as the skies. A full five minutes passed, then came "Next."

At once, their row moved. Several hundred people propelled forward on their feet, kicking up a cloud of dust in their wake. The refugees tumbled together in small clumps. The merchants yanked on their animals. The caravans creaked forward. Yells and shouts filled the air. The gate opened before them, yawning like a giant's mouth.

"... Holy crap," Aki breathed as soon as their little group cleared the stretch in front of the gate and came into the exam room. Naruto agreed with her. It was inappropriate to call it a room. Within the walls of Kokkyo was a hall large enough to fit Konoha stadium inside. The size of it was evidence of the city's wealth and power, Kokkyo, the greatest border city of Fire.

In the middle of the hall was a squad of samurai guards. "Listen up." Said one of them to the crowd. The refugees were bewildered, their first time coming to such a city, the merchants and frequent travellers expectant, they had been through this before. The guard, on the other hand, looked plainly bored. "On that side..." He pointed to the end of the hall. "... are the ID booths. You will present your wood cards and papers to them... if you have it." Naruto eyed the 'booths'. He saw none. Instead, in the wall, there were the openings of eight tunnels. "As soon as you're cleared, you are welcomed to Kokkyo. But first, you'll have to pass this line."

The line the samurai was referring to was, in fact, a seal barrier. A line of symbols carved into the floor bisected the hall. Erected from it, a luminous blue veil shielded the other half.

"Trouble." Naruto whispered matter-of-factly.

"Single file." The samurai gave a clipped order. The crowd moved in jumbles, lurching forward. Naruto circled the end of the group, eyeing the glyphs on the ground. S-grade detector seal. Chakra-sensitive. This was a barrier designed to snitch out ninja from normal civilians. Not good. He whispered his discovery to his group.

"Boss, can you take down that barrier?"

He shook his head. Negative. The design was ancient, a Tyrannosaurus Rex of sealing art. Its root was back in the days when violent conflict between ninja and samurai was the norm. With time, he could break it, but on the fly like this, with a bunch of non-ninja-friendly samurai on the watch. No chance.

"What're we gonna do?" Zaki hissed. Half of the crowd had cleared the barrier, the other half quickly following. They can't keep straggling behind.

"Keep calm." Naruto said simply before joining the line. He pulled Mo and Hanzo behind him. "Aki, Zaki,..." He paused and gave the glyph another one-over. In theory, with the toad seal, he should be invisible to all sensory activities. However, before him, the toad seal had never been used on a human, and it had never encountered an enemy seal of this calibre. "... If I blow, cloak the children. While I take care of the samurai, flee." The frog twins stiffened before leaping off his shoulders and down to the orphans. Green as they were, they understood his order. He would go first. If the seals reacted, the samurai would focus on him alone. The crowd would panic, a perfect cover for two children under genjutsu.

"Keep calm. Remember what I said." He repeated when he felt small childish hands clamping onto his wrists. The line moved swiftly under the samurai's watch. In two minutes, Naruto was facing the barrier. He pried his hands from the orphan's grip and took the step. Time slowed.

...

Naruto's foot hit the ground on the other side of the barrier among a cacophony of sounds. He felt the children pausing behind him - The samurai guard yelled "Next." – then the thump of two small bodies colliding with his back. Aki landed on his shoulder right on the next second.

"We passed! Nothing happened. Woohoo!" So the seal worked. He could have sworn he felt something when he was halfway through that...

"Halt!" came the shouted order. The line froze. The crowd stilled. From one of the tunnel opening, a soldier ran out.

"Shit. You just had to tempt them." Zaki hissed at his twin sister, then he bloated his cheek, preparing for a genjutsu. Naruto laid a finger on the yellow frog's head and calmed him. "Wait." The soldier stopped in front of the samurai squad and muttered something. The squad leader frowned, glanced at the crowd where Naruto stood, before muttering something back.

"Are they arguing?" Aki whispered in his ear. It seemed so. Naruto slunk deeper into the crowd, pulling the children with him. The confused refugees tied a tight knot around their little group.

"They detected something." Naruto said under the buzz of the worried crowd. "But they don't know what... or they would have attacked." The toad seal worked, but only half-way. They were safe for the moment, but it wouldn't take long for the samurai to pinpoint the problem. They needed to get out of this room and into the city. Now.

Naruto scanned the hall for an escape route. The gate from which they had come in was locked, so it was a no go. The eight tunnels were wide open. The samurai squad stood between them and the way into the city. Directly taking them on would be stupid, but... Naruto's eyes went between the guards and the tunnels, finally ended with the buzzing crowd. A plan formed in his mind.

"Aki, I need a poison."

"What type?"

"Quick and non-lethal. Something that's really visible." The red frog murmured several names into his ears. Naruto grinned wickedly. Aki's answer was far better than he expected. They wouldn't even need to risk genjutsu. "Mo, Hanzo, when I say so, hang onto me, and don't let go." He gripped the orphan's hands and led them deeper.

"That one." He nodded discreetly at a refugee, a rugged man with a mousy nervous look about him. Aki puffed up her cheek and squirted out a tiny droplet, hitting the back of the man's head. "The fat merchant." Another squirt. "The crippled." And another. "The guy in the smock..." Within three minutes, more than a dozen were marked. Naruto checked the guards. They were still arguing. Perfect. He grinned again in anticipation, then opened his mouth. His voice came out in an ear shattering screech. Produced by a superhuman tonsil, it shattered the human scream record of a hundred and twenty eight decibels, and easily K.O-ed the scream that might be produced when a woman was put in the presence of a mouse.

"... he's got pox!"

The first second after his scream, dead silence reigned in the hall. The second was dominated by the thuds of bodies hitting the floor, those poor souls who had stood too close when Naruto was engineering his fake distress cry. On the third, the crowd awoke from their stupor and finally took stock of the man who Naruto's finger was pointing to, specifically at the tiny poxes that were popping up like flies on the man's skin.

Small pox. The epidemic disease that killed at least a third of its victims and blinded and scarred the rest. The ancient scourge that haunted humanity before it was completely eradicated by a joint medical effort of all five elemental countries. Of course it wasn't small pox on the poor sod who was quaking under the stare of several hundred people. It was merely a rash, an allergic reaction caused by Aki's poison, but at that moment under the scrutiny of a terrified crowd, the rash warped and became something that seemed a lot more dangerous than it really were.

Right on cue, several more screams ripped from the mob. The other 'pox victims' were discovered. Panic rippled in the mass. People shouted, screamed, jostled. A stampede happened. "Just as planned." Naruto grinned lazily as he spied the samurai cursing and breaking out of their squad, trying to reinstall order. He lurked in the streams of running people, hunting for the perfect opportunity. In the next minute, he had it. Second tunnel from the far right. A stretch about one thousand foot from where he was. The crowd was thinner there, only one guard between him and Kokkyo.

Naruto crouched down. "Now." The orphans jumped, each to a side of his flank, and gripped on tight. He pulled back for one second, his body twisting into a runner's launch position. For one heart-beat, everything stilled. Noises died. The mob froze. In a perfect silence, Naruto saw only the tunnel and the samurai in front of it. Then the silence shattered and the world detonated in his ears and eyes. He shot forward like a bullet.

Naruto registered the solid neck of the samurai guard in his right hand before he saw the stupefied expression on the man's face. Throat veins pulsed under his grip, a warning cry choked and stopped short in its windpipe before it could escape. He lifted the samurai clean off the ground without slowing down. He crossed the hall in two seconds flat, carrying himself, two children, and a full-grown man decked out in metal armour.

"Cloak." He said the moment he skidded to a stop.

"Roger!" A barrier came up immediately, hiding them from view. Mo and Hanzo slid off him, shaken and quivering after their breakneck journey. Naruto eyed the tunnel before him. A corridor dug deep inside. Just how thick was this city wall? Behind his back, the noises of the pandemonium echoed.

The samurai struggled in Naruto's grip, his feet kicking widely in the air. "Trying to ID me?" He squeezed once. The samurai grunted. Spittle formed on his mouth, the skin on his face rapidly turning a beet-root purple. Amazingly, even under this condition, the guard's gaze still hovered on Naruto's face. "That's cute." Naruto commented. "But I can't have that." He brought his knee up, slamming it into the guard's crotch. "Nighty nite!" He released his grip. The now unconscious guard slid to the floor.

With that done, he turned back and scanned the hall. The mob was going wild inside, but these samurai were well-trained. He'd give seven minutes, tops, for at least one of them to realise something was wrong. Which meant... that they better get going now.

"Cloak down, Zaki," he murmured to the frog twins. Their genjutsu was flawless, hard for even trained sensors to notice, but from the high degree of anti-nin security he'd seen so far, it wouldn't be far-fetched for them to also have a genjutsu-detecting field up. For all he knew, the alarm had been ringing on them since. "Come on." He pulled the children deeper into the tunnel and away from the hall. The unconscious samurai wore a full get-up of armour, helmet, and cloak. A perfect cover. He quickly stripped these off and put it on himself. Then he hefted the near-naked samurai up with one hand.

"Aki, Zaki." Naruto hurled the samurai upward. The moment the samurai hit the ceiling, the frog twins opened their mouths and spit out gobs of toad glue, firmly sticking him there. Naruto gave a quick one-over. Normal people rarely looked up. That guard would stay unnoticed for awhile. Just in time, the noises in the hall had died down a little bit.

"Let's go." The orphans nodded and climbed onto him. The ridges of the samurai armour gave them better seating than last time. Naruto pulled the thick cloak over them and started making his way in. He ran full speed, and two minutes in they passed the ID booths the guards mentioned. The samurai disguise gave them safe passage. The gate into the city was steel-cast and wide opened. Naruto slunk over it and into the city.

Then Kokkyo took them by storm.

* * *

On paper, Kokkyo's full name was U~esuto no Tenshi Gurēto Kokkyō Toshi no Tochi. The Land of Angels, Great Border City of the West. The city covered an area of three-thousand squared miles with a population totalling up to nine millions, twenty-three times the size of Konohagakure in its heyday. The city wall was two kilometres thick in its thinnest point, dated at 112 years old, and built by Doton-jutsu master builders. Thirty land gates, steel-cast and reinforced. Twelve river gates, half of which incorporated deep-water docks suitable for imperial-sized fleets.

The city sat upon a nexus of cross-country rivers, the backbone of its bustling industry and transportation systems. Its wealth and political power rivalled that of Fire capital city. Amidst the chaos of the current era, war had not touched Kokkyo in ten years. Its people were blessed with peace, riches, and happiness. There was a saying that a beggar in Kokkyo was a rich man elsewhere.

Or at least, that was what the pamphlet said.

"So what ya say lady? Five hundred Ryo! It's practically thievery! I guarantee you won't find a better price elsewhere!" Said the merchant as he shoved the map and the pamphlet in Naruto's face. Three gold teeth glinted in his jaws, eclipsed by two missing ones right next to them.

"Look... uh... I just need the direction." Naruto swatted the pamphlet aside before leaning right to dodge the swinging signboard – Toyo's Budget Backer Guide for Tourists. Happily in service since 3xxx! "Number 22, Red Bridge, Yogekisha. You know it?"

"Ain't never heard of it lady." The map went back to Naruto's face. "But on second thought, I may have forgotten it. Well, no matter, I'm sure I've written it down somewhere in here. Four-fifty, last price lady. It's the bargain of the century!" The map inched closer, fanning a breeze of musty hemp pulp and half-dried ink right into Naruto's nose. In hot neon pink, the title declared 'Kokkyo map for the ladies, single and looking, or married and glamorous.' In the middle was a hand-drawn picture of the city, darted with an army of red dots helpfully denoting all the available lady's joints, a veritable forest of beauty salons, health spas, shopping bazaars and chocolate factories.

The column on the left read.

_Tired of your A-cup tininess? Feel like the other half of the world is ignoring you? Come to Mimosa Grand where every whim and worries of yours are catered to. Our breast enhancer program is certified by state healers, guaranteed to boost you to C-cup, D-cup, or even Z-cup. Come to Mimosa Grand, bring out your inner Geisha to nail that Samurai you've always wanted._

_Winter is coming and your skin is screaming. Embarrassed by your scaly legs? Friends laughing at you? Are you sure you're giving it the treatment it deserves? Say hello to La Snow, the newest skincare innovation. With essences of mountain goat placenta, crushed turtle scales, and twenty types of essential oils, La Snow gives your skin the best protection against sun, snow, and wind. Try out La Snow, say goodbye to dry scaly skin and hello to your new Fabulous Winter Lady attitude. La Snow. Because you're worth it._

_East Side Block A Warehouse. Lady Sales 30% off all last season products until Friday night. Limited amount. Buy 2 get 1 free for all Neleena inner lady wear products. Buy a minimum of fifty thousand Ryo and be gifted with a 50 Ryo voucher. No squealers and screamers allowed._

The column on the right read.

_NamTaeng chocolate fondue. It melts in your mouth __like men and heaven. This season chocolate is 50% less fat and 20% more orgasm-inducing. The new formula allows for better staying power against you bare skin. The chocolate core is stuffed with chakra-grown cocoa by the Yooni ninja woman tribe, guaranteed to make love to your tongue and pamper your body. NamTaeng—love yourself._

_Kokkyo exotic male escort club is having our fiftieth Coochi Coochi Coo week to welcome our newest batch of lady's entertainers and caterers. Come to our club and bask in the celebration. No matter your demands, our expert genjutsu users and henge specialists are sure to satisfy. With us, you'll never have to hide your naughtiness for Kokkyo warlord ruler Tsuki no Miyamoto, your hotness for the legendary womanizer Zazanha Nobunaga, or your uncontrollable wildness with army general 'Grizzly Bear' Nahum. Or... why not go for 'the dark side'? We have a collection of ninja clan heads like the prominent Senju, Uchiha, or Uzumaki. Our swords are long. Our kunai are sharp. Our shuriken are ready. Come to us and get all the Coochi Coochi Coo you'll ever nee..__._

"Good God!" Naruto screamed before taking three steps backward. He reconsidered for a second, then took two more steps. He sucked in a deep breath before calmly saying. "Thank you. I've changed my mind." The moment Naruto turned on his heel, Toyo, the map merchant, was in front of him again. "You drive a hard bargain ma'am. How about a twenty percent discount? I'll even throw in a free voucher."

_What the fuck kinda city is this?_ Thought Naruto as he brandished his defence, an empty coin pouch, at the merchant's face. "No money." Toyo froze. Naruto took advantage of his momentary lapse and hightailed pass him.

He was a few steps away when the merchant snarled at his back. "You flat-chested hag!" For a second, he considered spitting back something nasty – 'Me, you, a carving knife and half an hour, then we'll see who's bigger than who, greasy bastard.' – but he refrained. He had better things to do. That, and shortening the distance between himself and the piece of paper bearing his family name on the rentboy list right now sounded like a _really_ bad idea.

"City of angels my ass. More like lair of greedy merchant vultures." He muttered as he fled from an angrily shrieking Toyo, annoyed and confused. Kokkyo was not what he expected. Around him, people walked, thousands of pedestrians coming from a hundred different cultures. Merchants. Bypassing travellers. Foreign delegates. The cacophony of alien languages was a shock to Naruto's ears. He was ready for an open and eclectic port city, but this...

A camel passed him by, spitting where his feet would have been if he hadn't dodged in time. An elephant followed it, then a brawny redheaded man shouting in strings of angry hisses and growls.

"Teja! Seteja! Ons is laat deur twee uur! Choo choo Bunny askh shee har! That turtle doesn't tie itself, fucktwit! Tha Bosh'tet! Dirad sunakh thee haw!"

"Fish! Fish!" Bellowed the fish seller as Naruto passed her stand. "Scad for two! Loach for three!" The stand next to hers sold camera obscura and broken electric plugs. The one in front sold fresh tea leaves and secondhand kimono.

"HatYai silk! On sale, lady and gent..."

Naruto itched to cover his ears with his hands. Kokkyo East Side Day Market had sounded like a good idea two hours ago. Plenty of people. Easy to blend in and lay low. Abundant info sources. Now he wasn't so sure anymore. Granted, he was blended in as blended in could be. Wrapped in two layers of coat, a cloak and a face mask, and zero degree visibility due to the wall of people around him, it would take some extraordinary chance of luck for a samurai guard to eyeball him out. Yet, he hadn't felt this exposed in a long while. The people were all over his personal space. He was walking among them in lime daylight, easily seen by any average Kokkian. Any moment now, a dagger could slip right into his ribcage before he could spot it over the market din, or more likely, a grimy hand heading for his coin pouch (which really was just an empty decoy but one he would still like to keep).

To add insult to injury, the information he was looking forward to was complete shit.

"How'd it go?" Zaki greeted him the moment he got back to their rendezvous, a small market corner where traffic mercifully ebbed to a trickle.

"Negative." He replied. "Money is the law here. Have a few coins and everybody and their mother knows even where you hide your dirty underwear. Have none and they could care less if you're the visiting Bodhisattva." He ran a hand over his sweat-slick hair. "I hadn't thought it would be like this too." Truth be told, he was expecting something more along the line of meek women in traditional robes and zori sandals, and men with bad haircuts speaking in ancient dialect. A lovable village filled with old Zen-ish stuffs like Samurai Katana, wooden houses and Shoji doors. Maybe even a couple of pagodas and a dozen wholesale monks to go with it.

This... This wasn't what he thought Kokkyo would be.

Zaki merely shrugged as if to say 'Don't look at me. I'm only a frog. You're the human here.' Instead, a different question came out from the frog's mouth. "So what'd you find?" Immediately, a certain Kokkyo map popped into his mind, provoked by Zaki's question. Naruto grimaced before answering. "Nothing, except that we're gonna be on the street for a while." He held up a hand before the frogs pushed for clarification. "Where's Mo?"

"But boss, doesn't this mean we're in trouble?" Aki perked up next to her brother. Her coat color fluctuated between deep red and beet purple. "We've got no place to stay. We've got no... watcha-call-it? Money? Ryo? We're practically beggars. And we're on the run! Those big scaly Samurai humans nearly got us the last time." Aki's voice megaphoned her distress. If it wasn't for the layers of genjutsu around her, Naruto was sure they would have had a talking-toad panic right now. "I don't know about you, boss. You're big and strong. But we are really small..." She gestured at herself and Zaki. "... even among our clan. Those humans are like ... mountains to us. And it's sooooo his fault..." Zaki wilted under the force of his sister's glare. "... that we never took any self-defence against huge-ass armor-wearing sword-wielding human class. If those humans ever poke me with their pointy metal thing, I don't know what I'm gonna do!"

"I'll tell you what to do." Naruto mentally pushed the 'stop' button before his trademark Uzumaki grin could show itself. Here was the second-most venomous creature in the ninja world, worrying about being 'poked' by samurai. If Naruto had a stick with Aki tied on one end, that stick would make its way to the top ten most fearsome weapons of the century. "You vomit on them, then you let your 72 types of poison take care of the rest. That, or cry. Tears works too."

Aki's glare switched from Zaki to him. Naruto held up a hand. "Come on, relax." With his other hand, he turned the palm-sized pebble Mo had given him around, a few words thoughtfully scratched onto it in case he forgot.

Number 22, Red Bridge, Yogekisha. Totoro-san of Tonari Inn.

Below that was the stick figure rendition of a Ryokan, a traditional Edo-style luxurious inn, done by an eleven year-old child with her four years-old memory. The plan, according to Mo, was for him to find Tonari Inn on day one in Kokkyo, secure their place there before settling out for anything else, using nothing but his awesome ninja magic. According to Naruto's fourteen years experience in the ninja business, plan A was almost always a no-go.

"I never thought anything would come from this," Naruto said bluntly, "I'm a good ninja, not a miracle maker. This is a big city. Finding this... inn... would take time." He bounced the pebble on one hand as he looked out the alley entry. Hundreds of people walked the streets. A group of Southern Nomads passed by in a hurry. Their coal black skin and deep red hair burned like wild fire even in the weak light of a late autumn day.

"And even if I do find it, what do you think will come of it? The man is just an acquaintance of Mo's father. What do you expect him to do? Take us under his roof and feed us? A strange woman, a boy with evil-looking eyes and a girl whose father he happened to do business with? From what I've seen of this city, that's not likely to happen... Not... to mention, that we _are_ fugitives from the law here. I don't expect anyone to hang out their neck for a complete stranger."

"But surely... boss, aren't you all from the same clan? The human clan?"

"Humans are complicated, Aki." He pocketed the pebble. "All I'm saying is... It's something to look into. If we're lucky, we might get some good info. But I don't want to focus too much on it. It will become a red herring to what we should really focus on. _Lay low_. And find a good place to take root. We kicked up a big ruckus at the city gate. I'd rather our entry was less flashy, but we were tight on time. So I can't really complain. All things considered, they should be out for our blood now. Lucky that this city is so big. Hard job for them but good for us. I doubt anyone would turn an eye at a few more vagrants on the street."

"You can't mean that!" Aki protested. "What about the kids? They're just children. They need a place to sleep. Somewhere safe. And food. We're running out. You can't mean for us to sleep on the street, do ya?"

"I do." He replied tersely. "If that's what it takes to keep all of us out of Samurai prison." Aki wilted under his stern gaze. Maybe this was too soon and too sudden but he needed two more partners, not two more children for him to take care of. "They want to be ninja. This _is_ what it means to be a ninja. The faster they can let go of the glamour, they longer they're going to live." He crossed his arms as he surveyed the alley corner where they stood. It had been some goddamned long time since he was out in the open. The noises alone were putting him on edge. "Now..." He stressed the words coming out of his mouth. "Where're the kids?"

As if summoned by his question, Mo and Hanzo appeared from the alley entry. "You're back!" The girl orphan exclaimed.

"Where've you been? I told you to stay put," he shot at them.

"Around," Hanzo answered sullenly.

"You wouldn't believe what we saw, Naruto! Everybody is a princess here!" There was a certain dreaminess in Mo's voice. Idol worship. The girl sighed, looking every bit a small-town girl on her first visit to the big city. "So many dresses! And the shoes... and the little dogs, like puffy cotton candies on their arms... and they are all so pretty... Oh, I wish..."

"So what?" Hanzo snapped at his fellow villager. "So they're stinking rich and they like to flaunt it. What's the big deal? I bet all that powder on their face is going to make them sick. And I bet they have really horrible teeth from all that red thing they put on their lips. And if they ever see Naruto, I bet they're going to froth at their mouth and DIE! From jealousy! Cause she's ten time more beautiful than them and she doesn't even wear powder and lip-paint!"

"Ninja princess. Don't forget the ninja princess part." Zaki added in helpfully.

A rich-looking couple passed the alley, cutting into Hanzo's spontaneous rant. The woman sniffed at them over the fur-trimmed collar of her expensive Furishode Kimono. "Filthy beggars." She drawled. "I thought lord Miyamoto had cleansed the like of them off the streets."

"Bitch!" Hanzo replied in earnest. The orphan boy would have said a lot more if Naruto hadn't grabbed him by the collar and dragged him away from the fuming couple, deeper into the alley.

"Hanzo..." He said to the boy once they were well away. "... Don't start fights you don't intend to finish."

"I was going to finish it. I was going to bite her ... really hard... and gives her rabies! Then I was going to pee on her dress and made her wish she hadn't spent all that money on it!"

_Oh god_. He pinched his nose and reminded himself. _They're not soldiers. They're children. Not soldiers_._ Children_...It wasn't working. He was going to need more patience.

"Naruto..." Mo snuck up to him and pulled at his sleeve. "... I'm hungry. Can we have something else other than grasshopper legs on sticky rice today?"

He turned his attention to the girl, an answer ready at the tip of his tongue – _'No, Mo. We can't afford anything. In case you haven't noticed, I came into this world buck naked. The Senju were stingy bastards so they didn't give me anything worth shit. Your whole village didn't have a single coin in it. The Toads don't even understand what money is. And I didn't dare sell the armours I ripped off that poor Samurai bastard 'cause I didn't want to leave them any trace they could use to pin my ass down. So No.'_ Then he saw the girl's face. In the span of two seconds, Mo weaponized her glistening brown eyes and blew two tonnes of little-orphan-girl's-kitty-stare-of-death into his brain, effectively neutralizing every shred of resistance.

_Jesus fucking Buddha_. His son was to blame. Nine years of trying to be world's best dad had made him a sucker for things like these.

"... Alright. What do you want?" He said in defeat. Mo's face brightened before turning left. He followed the direction of her gaze to a small wagon resting beside the intersection of two alleys. A grubby-looking Kokkian manned the port, selling honey-glazed bon-bons to a gaggle of childrens.

Figures. Kids and their junk foods.

Then his brain did a somersault on the idea. He considered the candy wagons and its seller, a light-bulb popping into his head. Perhaps he could use this.

"Keep this." He said as he handed his pack to the frog twins. Zaki hopped on top before croaking at him. "But boss, we don't got no money. What'cha gonna do?"

"We don't need money..." He flashed the frogs a grin. "... We're ninjas. We've got our ninja magic."

"Magic?" He savoured the eager surprise on his ward's faces. Perhaps this wasn't entirely appropriate for a Hokage, but if he were to be made a petty thief, he could at least enjoy it.

"Watch." He set off with a flutter of his cloak. His slight female frame slipped easily into the streams of people. The candy wagon was flooded with customers, crowing children and their much suffering baby-sitters, its owner whirling with the overwhelming demand.

Too easy.

He stood next to the wagon, wedged between the wall and a child drugged with two wallets-worth of carbonated sugar. His hand moved once, twice, unseen under the fold of his sleeve. And the deed was done. No one even noticed he was there at all.

"But you didn't do anything." Hanzo exclaimed the moment he was back. In answer, he pulled back his sleeve, brandishing half a dozen glistening bon-bons, now under new ownership. The wicked delight blossoming on the orphan's face was almost worth it.

He watched the orphans descended on the fruits of his labour. A memory from far past surfaced suddenly. The sweetness of honey exploded on his tongue. The ringing laughter of his son painted the air baby blue. It was gone before he could catch it.

"My mama said stealing is bad..." Mo declared as she sucked on one finger, the candies torn to pieces between her and her fellow villager. Naruto rose one eye-brow. What now? He opened his mouth, but before he could get anything out, the girl broke into a gigantic grin.

"She probably never knew how good free food tasted... especially after a month of fireflies onigiri."

Hanzo spared one moment to make googly surprised eyes at Mo before jumping him. "Teach me that." He surrendered easily. He had counted on it, in fact. If the kids were enthralled with his cheap tricks, they wouldn't notice other things.

The hand movements were easy to show. A flick of the wrist. Some knowledge on positions. Simple snatch and grab techniques. Yet this was the kind of things chuunin instructors avoided mentioning to civilian parents. Telling eager mamas and dadas that their piddilly-powderly-puffs have been practicing purse-cutting on human guinea-pigs just didn't sound good no matter how well they dressed it.

Despite the height of power, political and military both, that ninja reached within a hundred years, few forgot their humble origin. Before ninja became the legitimate protectors of Daimyo, they were something else. Thieves. Thugs. Scums who traded kills for coins and status. The older Naruto got, the better he understood that the righteous ninja shtick was a simple PR job. Something to make the business flow.

The things that civilians didn't understand was that being a ninja wasn't about kunai-101. Being a ninja was a state of mind. You had to be able to steal candies from a man before you could steal his life. Whether you did so by trickery or by gutting him and taking the spoils from his fingers were irrelevant. And now he was teaching that same mentality to these two orphans.

After two fumbling hours, he released them on unsuspecting Kokkians. Mo and Hanzo flew down the streets, howling with laughter. He watched them for a minute, making sure there was no samurai nearby, before nodding to the frog twins.

"Follow them. Keep them safe." He repeated when only Aki leaped off after the orphans. "Both of you."

Zaki gave him a look. "You sure, boss?"

"Don't worry about me. I've already got my tags on you. My old man's specialty. Hiraishin no Jutsu."

Those kids were a handful. It would take both frogs to keep them out of jail for practicing their newly-gained skill on the wrong targets. Not to mention, he needed Aki and Zaki gone. The next thing on the agenda he wanted to do alone.

He moved from his spot once Zaki was out of view. The ocean of people swallowed him readily, just another visitor among the hundred thousand. Kokkyo opened up around him, full of life, riches, and beauty... full of shit.

Within half a morning, he had counted no less than five thousand refugees in front of the gate he'd passed. Yet he saw none of them here. Where were they? What had been done to them? He found corpses and rumours of rampaging Uchiha outside the city perimeter. Wide-spread unrest. Villages burnt to the ground. But for all intents and purposes, Kokkyo was carefreely enjoying its latest fashion rage. If what he had sniffed at the Senju fortress was a stinking fish, then this city was a stinking whale.

He found a good vantage point after some looking. The end of an alley. Shaded. Him alone. He checked his chakra reserve. His 'blue' was under wraps. He had only about as much as when he was fifteen, not counting Kyuubi.

Maybe a hundred Kage Bunshin. No. That would draw too much attention. Twenty then. Enough to make good progress and still stay under the radar.

He made the familiar hand seals within a second, with only a small change to the seal so that the clones appeared one by one, discreetly popping into existence. Without needing any orders, they spread out, each to a direction, ready to scour the city to its last alleys.

He stayed and waited.

* * *

The first crack came in at 45:06 after the first batch of Kage Bunshin. There was the familiar 'zinngg' of a shadow clone dispelling itself and an image flooded his head.

A slaughter house. Pools of blood and rain water at its gate. Grimy floor and wall. A couple of street rats fighting over left-over pig entrails. On the left side, the opening of a back alley gaped like cave mouth.

The image was jarring next to the pastel-coloured parlours and silk-wrapped salons Kokkyo was flooding him with since zero-hour. Finally, a wound in its spotless facade.

The flare of chakra pinpointed its location North West. Ten minutes running time if he was going for leisure. Naruto shook himself out of waiting mode and slipped easily through the maze of back alleys. The clone's memory was coming back in waves, drawing a clear neon-lighted trail of arrows toward his destination. Five minutes, he set the goal. Or the area would be swarmed with chakra sensors.

Within four minutes and twenty seconds, he hit his mark. Dirt swirled under the heels of his boots. The slaughter-house sang an orchestra of rots in his welcome. Naruto pinched his nose with two fingers before advancing past it and into the back alley. A pig's eye ball rolled lazily by his feet.

Past the burly butchers, the alley opened itself. The smells hit him first. Old blood and desperation. Decaying bodies. Sweat and shit. They weren't from slaughtered animals. These were human smells. He shuddered once at its familiarity before leisurely strolling in. The stink wasn't any worse than a war-time hospital ward. The faces were much prettier too.

The alley hugged the back of the slaughter-house before sweeping a straight line sloping downward. The back of the workshop was used as a dumping ground. Mountains of refuses of varying degrees of freshness lay festering under the afternoon sun. There was a frenzy of activities on top of them. Flies, beggars, hungry dogs. Fighting for morsels of unwashed guts.

"Not so pretty now, are we?" He murmured to himself. Despite the grim picture, he was suddenly a lot more comfortable.

He left the butchery behind, venturing in deeper. The weaker beggars, the old, the women, and the young, languished at the back of the pack, unable to fight their way in. He read despair and sickness on their faces. For a heartbeat he paused under the weight of hundred pairs of eyes on him. Fresh meat, they said. Then came the hands, grabbing, searching. There was no subtlety in their thievery, only sheer number and shamelessness. Still, he stayed quiet, his body open and docile. The hands moved up and down his body, into his bag, squeezing his decoy coin pouch.

There was nothing for them. Nothing to find. Not food. Not coins. Nor hope. Their eyes met again, a hundred pairs of black eyes against his blue, before retreating, the men not even interested in the sex, not with the waste of energy it would require.

Not wasting a moment, he slipped in among them, his dirty coat meshed with the colors of their rags. Five min-twenty four. The samurai sensors should be on his trail by now. He needed to move quick.

Further in, the scene changed. A big bonfire crackled cheerily on one side of the street. A breeze funnelled the smoke in his direction. The corpses lay in neat rows along the sidewalk. Some were covered, most left to fester. Right next to the corpses, an old man was gasping his last breath.

"P...p ... please." The old man hissed. His death rattle was the sound of water-filled lungs, his brown gnarled skin covered with pock-marks. His nose had rotten off so the 'Please' came out sounding more like 'Pweese'.

Yet the message was clear.

Naruto laid a hand over the old man's eyes. "Asking a killer for mercy death. You've got some good eyes, grandpa. Hope you get to use it next time." A relieved sigh pulsed under his palm. "Be at peace". His chakra pulsed along with it. The soul of the dead man escaped with an exhale. Naruto was already off by then, the dead-man's _thankyou_ still rippling through him.

He shouldn't have done that.

He had made two chakra dots in under ten minutes. He had essentially drawn a line and a red arrow for his pursuers. Stupid. But the deed was done. He would simply have to make up with speed. His legs wheeled, going past normal human limit. They alley rushed forward in a blur of gray walls and ripping wind. His brain beat the clock along with his feet, processing what he'd just seen.

_So what's happening in this city?_ A plague. Typical for large cities. The symptoms were strange though.

_The fire._ Plague control at its most basic. Just pile the bodies and watch them burn. Could be a government job. Could be local gangs. He'd seen too little to call the shots.

_The unexpected level of technology in Kokkyo public?_ He didn't know much about this time period in the first place, so he was probably a poor judge. Yet, if his memory wasn't failing him, he recalled a color photograph of a genin-age Sandaime with the Senju brothers. What was the stretch that there were similar... or better... things in the supposed trade-center metropolis of the concurrent world? Not much. Not at all.

Still, this puzzle piece was incomplete. The refugees were still missing. His landscaping job was yet to be done, and only stupid ninja dared to fight in unknown territories.

In front of him, the alley zigzagged before spilling into a grass field. Naruto skidded to a stop. Before his eyes was the answer to his question. On a field the size of Konoha itself, someone had erected a quarantine zone, whole sections of land cordoned off inside layers of wood and barbwire barrier. Two makeshift towers, most likely raised on short time. Five patrol lines, as far as he could tell. Samurai. No seal barrier in sight.

The wind was in his direction, blowing in his face the odour of a whole city within a city. He smelt the road, dirt, fatigue. There were the sounds of children crying, the crackles of paltry meals burning on makeshift hearths, women yelling for their husbands.

Here were his refugees, herded and caged like cattle. Their long journey had robbed the fight out of them.

Something suddenly popped in his head. One of his clones had dispelled. The images streaming into his mind were flashes of a quick and decisive battle. His pursuers were on his heels. Naruto eyed the cordon, weighing his chances of sneaking in. He could easily lose the sensors inside this sea of people. There was also the possibility of more intel. After all, disgruntled and homeless people tend to have loose lips. The patrol here was thin, definite proof that Kokkyo's problem was quickly growing out of the local government's control. He could peel them off within minutes and seek easy entry.

On the other hand, hightailing out of here now was just as good an option. The city at his back was many times bigger and busier than the city in his front. Plus, he had two orphan kids to check up on. And who knew how much time he could waste for a wild goose chase inside the samurai-guarded quarantine zone.

Abruptly, something touched his hand and broke his trail of thoughts. Only Naruto's reflex saved the beggar woman from a quick and messy death. She held onto his sleeve with both hands and looked at him with dark empty eyes.

"You seenzz my husband?" Her gaze chilled him with its emptiness. She must have been beautiful once. But whatever disease was wrecking up Kokkyo backyard had eaten this woman whole. "I think they took him yesterday. He diezz yesterday. He was couffingz up something bloody..." She attempted to furrow her eyebrows, failed. "I can still hear him though. It's good. Nobody should die alone."

Naruto shook himself free. The woman's stick-thin hand offered him no resistance. She kept her eyes on him. "If you seezz him, pleezee tell him... tell him I'm waiting." He turned and walked away. His fists clenched uneasily at his sides.

This scene was too familiar.

With two quick motions of his hand, he drew a seal and set off an order to his clones. _Attack. Buy me time_. Short and simple and exactly what he needed right now. He surveyed the quarantine zone one last time, carving its location into his mind for later visits. Over the horizon, the sun was setting in a supernova of burning red and purple. The city beckoned. He threw one look back. The beggar woman sat like a gray spectre in a red-died street, looking back at him like the soul of Kokkyo itself. Empty. Rotten.

He shook his head. All thoughts of sneaking inside the samurai patrol perimeter had left him. He'd seen enough for the day. Then he turned and left.

* * *

He made good on his promise to the children – to make their beds on the street – that night. Not out of choice, but out of necessity. Obviously, resistance was expected.

"But we have money! We could rent a room." Hanzo protested as he waved the fruits of his thievery labour, several money pouches, in Naruto's face. In reply, Naruto allowed the boy one quiet moment as he stared at Hanzo's face, flushed with the triumph of a child who had just gotten his first taste of being in control, of being powerful... or at least the illusion of it. Then he took the boy's pouches from his hands and gauged it. The coins inside jingled. He counted fifty gold coins from the sound alone. A small fortune. More than anything Hanzo or Mo had ever seen in their lives, farmer children that they were. Enough for months of lavish livings even in this city of expensive smiles and services... but nowhere near enough for Hanzo to lose his head after his first successful ninja trick.

Before the orphan's shocked eyes and against Hanzo's angry yell, he threw the coin pouches down the open sewer a few feet away. Hanzo bolted, going after his hard-earned reward. But before he could move one step, Naruto fist snapped closed around the boy's wrist and stopped him short. He brought the boy closed to him, stooped down to his level, and looked him in the eye.

"I'll tell you what happens if we spend that money." He began, his voice not harsh but there was a definite edge to it. "First, people are going to like you... a lot. They'll bring you things, flashy things – toys you'll love – so that you'll spend your gold on them. Then they will remember you. They will remember your name. They will remember how you look. They will remember what you do, where you go, who you are with."

Naruto brought up a hand and showed the orphans what he had relieved off a random noble man before returning to them. A simple wood card. "Do you know what this is?" The orphans shook their head. Standing before an unmasked ex-Hokage, their childish defiance proved inadequate defence.

"This is just a piece of wood." He turned it around and showed them the words carved on its side. Kihito of the Hanja clan. A number. Some titles. An address. A vermilion red seal to prove its credibility. "But in this city, without it, you are not human." He paused for a second, let it sink in. "You've seen the city. You've seen the samurai running it. We're on the run. It doesn't matter where you go, someone would ask for it... or at least notice that it's missing."

He broke the card in two. Tomorrow morning, Kihito would throw a fit when he found out some street urchins had laid their paws on his precious noble body.

"I can easily steal ten more, but that's ten people who will squeal to the authority tomorrow. Ten traces I'll have left behind. Ten traces I don't need, especially when I'm using their names, when I'm making a scene throwing my new gold around, when people are going to remember that name... attached to the new faces in town."

Mo swallowed quietly in her corner.

"Then the blood hounds come. And... you know what blood hounds do, don't you Hanzo?" Hanzo wilted visibly. He understood. Naruto patted the orphan's heads. "It's only day one. You both have a long way to go. Don't lose your head for some chump changes. The most valuable possession you have right now is your life. And the only thing that ensures you still have it is anonymity."

He took them by the hands and led them to bed. If there was anything his female body was good for, it was this. They followed him like newborn chicks after their mother hen, lulled in by his maternally feminine appearance, absolutely oblivious to the fact that he was lying through his teeth.

Anonymity? Bullshit. Maybe for youngsters like them, but for a Hokage like him... hah. He could have easily gotten them a room with no one the wiser. A city this big meant that there was always some governmental dignitary ready to wag their tail and bark their tune to the sound of jingling gold. Someone ready to turn a blind eye. Some fool easily sidetracked with a well-placed Genjutsu. He could have gotten them first class hotel with twenty four-seven service men waiting at the door. No sweat. He could have gotten them ten-course dinner with full-on amuse-bouche and three carts of bon-bons for dessert served on top of the local police station. Mere dust off his shoulders.

But he didn't. Instead of first class hotel, it was the streets. Instead of ten-course dinners, it was three rice-balls with vinegar, shared between three human and two frogs. Instead of soft beds and feather-stuffed pillows, it was the dirt ground in the underbelly of a rickety beam bridge. The metal trusses kept the rain out, but it couldn't stop the air, so it was only the warmth of his body and whatever clothes they had on them against the cold of autumn end.

Why didn't he? Simple, because _**he didn't want to. **_

He held them like he did after the fire of Woodsmen Ville. It helped somewhat. The frogs sang them to sleep as he waited, weaving a gentle genjutsu into their melody. The night passed quietly around him. The old bridge groaned to the rhythm of his children's breaths.

09:00 PM. Ink dark.

10:00

11:49

Then something stirred. Slowly... very slowly, Kokkyo came to life. The local night animals left their dens for the watering holes. One of them passed by their bridge, looked at them—Naruto made no eye contact—and saw three vagrants huddling piteously together. It considered them for one moment—_Nah. Just homeless beggars. Nothing but shits and rags here_—before leaving in search for richer preys.

Naruto smiled. This was what he was waiting for. No balcony view of any five-star hotel could offer him this. Raw first-hand unfiltered info of the local fauna. Obviously not obtainable from a hotel lobby or under the guise of easy rich meat.

Around him, the city was filled with the sounds of human animals feeding on other human animals. He smiled wider and flexed his right hand. The seal he had carved on the ground this evening flared to life and suddenly he could see for miles and miles around, as if he had borrowed the eyes of a Hyuuga and the Kikaichu senses of an Aburame.

A thief passed in the night. A thug with his crude slashes through the throat of a drunken nobleman, hands held out for the coins spilling out of his pocket. A whore plying her trade in the back of a Laundry shop, her soft white breasts smudged with soap powder. A skinhead, like dogs pissing on trees to mark their territories, scratching out the emblem of a rival gang before carving in his own—a rat with one paw raised—into the wall.

There! ... He focused on the last image, his body tensing with anticipation. The seal spread, following the skinhead's steps. He was closer now, close enough to spot the same rat tattooed on his neck. He trailed the thug through the neighbourhood, then through the district. When the thug arrived at his rendezvous and the gang fights started, Naruto was standing by his side, silent, invisible, watching and learning.

* * *

"Ye know where ye going, laddie?" Said the steersman to Naruto two weeks after he first hit Kokkyo with two kid-size baggage in tow. It was late afternoon of a windy day. The river Hoang coiled violently beneath their tiny five-by-twelve ferryboat, hissing the first signs of an encroaching night storm.

"I sure hope so." Said Naruto as he kept his ratty turban in place with one hand. The North-East wind blew sideway against his face, carrying with it the fishy scent of the canning factory upstream. _No bed under the bridge tonight. Not with this wind_. He decided split-second.

"Rust town. Ain't no place for a woman and a coupa' kids." The steersman rowed the boat with one hand, his other gesturing to the landmark of their destination. A towering red bridge stretching across the river belt. "I lost my nose right here. Bad business with the local fisher folks down there. Got some rowdy crowds Rust-town does." He flaunted his caved-in nose at the orphans, enjoying the looks of awe they gave him. "Damn shame ye husband didn't make it, eh. You Southern refugee folks been in some tough time. Ye sure you don't want no bodyguards for the night? I can call up ma boys ina chop. I'll do it fer free even!"

"Thanks, grandpa. I can handle myself." Naruto clutched his cloak tighter, keeping his young-refugee-mother-with-kids persona firmly in place. This old ferryman was either of a good but annoying sort or an incredibly bad hawker. Either way, he didn't have the time to entertain him, not now, not in this atrocious weather.

The boat bobbed on the roiling waves, balancing itself on a watery knife edge, buffeted on both sides by the heavy river traffic of Kokkyo. It was rush-hour, water-style, with big shipping fleets and industrial steel ferries in place of carriages.

They couldn't hit ground faster than he wanted.

The moment his feet was planted firmly on solid ground, Naruto dropped a few bronze coins in the ferryman's hand, and slunk off before he was clubbed with another proposition. He dragged the orphans along the deserted and rundown streets of Yogekisha Island. He wasn't happy to be here, but he had to nonetheless.

A stray breeze blew the trash down the street. Half a page of newspaper, the headline screamed "Woman blessed by Guanyin: quintuplets on first go. Page 3. Council election man scandal – said Red Hot Chilli Sauces – found cahooting with twin mistresses in the Electoral Hall by opposition. Page 10. With pictures." He sidestepped it neatly.

"Number 22! Number 22!" Mo murmured excitedly, throwing furtive looks at the corn-row houses.

"What **is** this place?" Aki muttered in his ears, careful not to let the children heard her. "It smells like a goddamned graveyard... the bad kind."

"South Bridge. Yogekisha Industrial Park. Yogekisha Island." He answered. "Used to be the up-and-coming star of the manufacturing and trading sector half a decade ago, but the budget dropped off halfway so it was scrapped off the papers. Dead land. Then people started dropping their industrial wastes here since it was officially wild zone. The Junkyard moved in. People looking for a cheap hole-in-the-wall moved in but nobody's cleaned up the place ever since." He shot a glance at the bridge towering above them, its legs stretching over miles of river. "Locals call it Red Bridge because of the rust... supposed to be stainless steel so I'm guessing somebody embezzled the public coffer way too fucking hard."

He squeezed Mo's hand. "You remember what I told you before we left?"

"Yes." Mo answered. Her voice was timid but she couldn't hide the excitement in her eyes. Even Hanzo was perking up next to her. "If we don't find Totoro-san of Tonari Inn, we go _back_." She grimaced at '_back'_. He couldn't fault her. God knew what the little girl had in her mind about this Totoro-san of the luxurious Ryokan Tonari-Inn, probably the comfort of a real bed and warm bath, maybe familiar faces... definitely a huge upgrade from '_back'_. He didn't have a lot of hope in Totoro-san, whatever he'd seen from Kokkyo suggested it was just another typical metropolis-size rat-race, but he supposed children needed their resolution. Either way, he could spare sometimes so the kids could do away with their distractions while he concentrated on his objective: get a foothold in the local undergrounds.

"So... who is this Totoro-san again?" He asked absentmindedly as he summoned a map of the area from one of his clone's memory. He was walking this exact place three nights ago, alongside a hustler. Still, the streets were looking very unfamiliar under day light.

"He works with my papa." Mo said excitedly. "He works his inn and helps us with our wood trade."

A broker then. Made sense. He looked back once at the river. Yogekisha had a running port and several warehouses and it **was** planned to be the next big trading center. The water did the main transporting job. It would only take a few hired muscles to get the wood either to a storeroom or straight to the customer. Efficient and cost-conscious. The definite smell of a good business formula.

But then again. Woodsmen Ville wood wasn't really wood, was it? Already, he was having a dark premonition.

.

.

.

When they found Number 22, it was already near sundown. Mo banged the door while he looked the house over. Wood fence and a dusty chalkstone path. Piece of wood board hung haphazardly to a side. The words on it could have been Tonari no Ryokan, but it was too old to tell. Down the neighbour, a privately-run scrap-yard was spewing up a rainsworth of metal dust, covering the shabby houses of the whole neighbourhood in an off-grey sheen, the thickness of which was telling of the fact that the neighbours had long given up on either protesting or cleaning up.

It was an inn alright, thought Naruto, an old-sleepy-dog kind of an inn, one that was either near its expire date or already past it, and the way it slept at his feet made it too hard to tell.

"Human world is strange." Zaki muttered into his ears. "It doesn't rain water here..." The frog stuck out his tongue, testing the air. "... It rains... crap."

That was when the door opened and Naruto's earlier premonition came back full force. At the same time that the orphans were perking up, hope and rainbows literally shining out their eyes, he was bracing himself for the suckerpunch.

He'd never before looked at anyone's face and thought. _'Damn, this is gonna be shit.'_

"Totoro-san?" Said Mo, hopefully.

"Gree... who?" Said the man behind the opened door. He lifted two meaty fingers and plucked the pipe out of his mouth. The force of the pluck sent a ripple through his jowly face down to the tattoos on his neck. Busty geisha on the left. Rat with one raised paw on the right. They could have been works of art once, but as the skin upon which they were tattooed strained to accommodate the fat accumulating through the years, the rat's head had followed the stretching skin into a clown's bend and the geisha's tits sagged all the way through three neck folds.

"You're not Totoro-san, I take it." Naruto commented dryly.

"Nice guess." Not-Totoro made a smoker's pucker and blew out the smoke in short, breathy puffs. Naruto smelled bacon grease and opium. "Now gerroff my lawn. Take your little hoes with you. I paid the full jigs for god-damned professionals, not these scrawny scroungers." He jabbed his pipe in Mo's direction. "This bitch's got no tits on." The orphan girl shrank back, shock and horror and no small amount of shame on her face. Then the pipe veered towards Hanzo. "And I don't go for dicks." Hanzo went stone-faced in nano-seconds. Naruto gripped his shoulders, holding him in check. Then it was Naruto's turn. The pipe went up, then down, slowly, like a hungry dog over a juicy piece of steak. "You... you I like." The rat bowed. The geisha flapped her woman parts at Naruto when Not-Totoro's face settled into considering mode. "You I like... on all four, barking like the bitch you are. But I paid double. So go back to Ginjiro and tell him to send over the tits. Make them big!"

"You I like..." Aki spat into his ears, her voice too quiet to be heard by anyone other than her brother and Naruto. "...dead!" Her twin brother muttered in tandem. "This guy is going down."

Naruto, on the other hand, was untouched. He was long past the age when he could be riled up by small-time assholes like Not-Totoro. Besides, he had better things to do. The last ferry left in fifteen minutes and it looked like it was going to rain dogs and cats.

"Come on, kids." He tugged gently at the orphans. "There's nothing for us here."

It could have ended there. Hanzo followed him mutely. The boy was used to rejection. It could have ended there. But Mo wasn't. She wasn't ready to let go. The girl orphan slipped under his arm and made a mad grasp at Not-Totoro.

"Please! My father is Okabe! Of Woodsmen Ville! You've got to know him! He was here all the time. Every month! I was here once! I know this is the right place!"

Not-Totoro snarled - "You don't touch me, you little bitch!" – and raised one meaty hand. The next second, two things happened at once. Mo jerked back, hitting Hanzo squarely in her back. Naruto stepped forward, directly in front of her. All of a sudden, Not-Totoro was squirming in a steel grip; his face froze as a chill suddenly settled over him. Pain flared from his wrist, but it was dwarfed by a greater, phantom pain that seized him the moment the tiny animalistic part of his mind realized something not quite right was going on.

Something not quite right about the filthy whore with a man's grip in front of him. Something not quite right about her. He saw a flash of her eyes under the shade of her hood. Alien blue. The air boiled. Like magma. The phantom pain was like knives, searing through his fat. Not-Totoro had never looked at a woman's eyes before. He'd only cared for tits and asses. Something not quite right.

And then it was over. As sudden as it came, the woman released his hand. Not-Totoro fell down on his butt, panting.

Naruto kept one eye on the quivering pile of man in front of him. His hold on his killer instinct was tenuous. Nobody hit a child in front of him. _Nobody_. He would gladly gut this bastard open right here, right now, with nothing but his hands alone, but even war-hardened Kage knew wet-work in front of unbaptised children just wasn't done. Besides, he could already see a few heads poking inquisitively out the windows of their houses. As Shikamaru Nara would term it, were he alive and kicking, too troublesome for what it's worth.

"You... you... what did you..." Not-Totoro puffed.

But Naruto wasn't paying the inn-keeper any attention. His eyes were glued to the river bank, where a shroud of dust was kicking up and a long, low horn was rumbling in the air.

The last ferry. They'd missed it. He looked up. The skies were angry shades of red and purple. The cloud slithered like snakes. That ferryman was spot-on. It was going to storm tonight, and he had no intention of letting his kids grovel in the trash with no roof over their heads.

_Jeez, asshole_. He thought as he turned back to Not-Totoro. _Look what you just did. You just won the jackpot. Me. In your house. After dark. We're gonna party tonight._

There was one tense moment when only silence filled the space between them, Naruto too busy with his thoughts, and Not-Totoro too busy with fear clogging up his brain. Then it passed with a single movement. Naruto bent down, picked up the smoking pipe from the dirt ground. The smell told him it was opium, at about thirty-five percent dilution, too expensive for the owner of a rundown inn on a barely populated island to be puckering with on a dog's rain day... which roughly translated to 'This little shit has some secret gold stashed somewhere, which Naruto will be taking soon. The gold probably comes from illegal business, which he'll also be taking over.'

He handed the pipe to Not-Totoro.

"Wha..." Not-Totoro looked at the pipe then at Naruto, then at pipe again, incomprehensive. He was still sitting on the ground, the aftermath of shock had yet to leave him, and his adrenaline was screaming too loud for Not-Totoro to comprehend its frantic shrieks.

"Let us stay for the night." Said Naruto.

"Wha..." Not-Totoro sputtered. The look on his face could have been 'what am I, stupid?' if it weren't so dumb with fear.

"We just missed the last ferry." Naruto's voice went an octave higher, the result of a secret technique that contracted the wall muscles of his throat and tightening the caverns of his nostrils. "And it's going to rain." Naruto's fingers slipped up his shoulders, pulled at a knot at his throat. His hood came tumbling down at his feet.

"Let us stay for the night."

And suddenly, Not-Totoro was staring at something that froze and pierced him even deeper than fear. _Lust_.

"But... I ... I paid double... Ginjiro... big tits... double..." The inn-keeper wheezed, less out of greed, more out of penny-pinching habit.

"Ginjiro will come... with your special double." Naruto leaned over Totoro and laid a hand on his meaty shoulders. He felt absolutely nothing save a moment of mental quiet once his hand made contact. No pause. No awkwardness. He'd done worse in his tenure as Hokage—far worse than swindling a perverted meat bag out of his game. It felt no different than squishing a 92-inch A-grade steel dagger into a target's jugular. Nor any dirtier.

And in the end, this body was just a tool.

An exquisite tool. One crafted by a demon most familiar with human desire and perversion.

"_**I'm**_ on the house." The fat under Naruto' hand heated up in anticipation. Then the inn-keeper blurted out at last.

"No free meals."

Naruto smiled at him sweetly.

"It's a deal."

* * *

The room was dark. And the orphan's pale faces were like the faces of ghosts against its black backdrop. Naruto held them by the hands but it didn't help much. The air was too cold, and the rain outside too vicious compared to the tiny warmth of his hands.

"Make it quick." Not-Totoro grunted over his shoulder as he closed the door.

Not a moment after, Mo launched herself at Naruto. The girl orphan clutched his hand and stared at him with her big dark eyes and her mouth hang open. Hanzo prowled angrily behind her. He was only seven, and a boy. He didn't understand.

Mo was eleven, and a girl. As his wife sometimes reminded him, in that special way only she could. Always add three to a girl's age. They matured faster. They had to. All their life, they had always known what it was like to be weak.

Mo had no words for what she had to say, but Naruto understood anyway. And this was his answer to her unvoiced question:

"_Do you want me to spare him?"_

She looked pass him, through a layer of closed door. She didn't know the man outside, but for a while she'd thought of him as the only link to her past, to her family. She didn't know him, but for the split second when he had stuck her across the face, he was solid... solid as any normal human should be.

And that changed everything.

Then Mo looked back at Naruto, and her answer was:

"... No."

Hanzo paused, confusion written all over on his face. Mo squeezed Naruto's hands and whispered to him the way children sometimes whispered naughty secrets to each other.

"I understand now. We are ninja. We only want to live. So..." She didn't flinch away from his gaze.

Naruto patted her head. "Good girl." Then he stood up. "Aki. Zaki." The frog twins obeyed him wordlessly and leaped off, each to an orphan.

Naruto flashed them a toothy grin. "I'll be right back." Then he was through the door.

When the shutter closed with a snap, Not-Totoro was standing a bare puff of breath away from him, wearing a look on his face that clearly stressed his need to over-compensate now that the fear had passed.

"You bitch..." The inn-keeper breathed down his neck. A hand was ghosting somewhere near his thigh. "... you had me up in a tizzle. Thought you were somethin' there. But you're just another cunt aren't ya? Oh, I'm going to make you scream."

Naruto's control faltered once. For maybe half a second. When the next half rolled by, he had a smile plastered readily on his face and his mouth crooning out words in a tone he'd die before he let anyone else beside this fool of an innkeeper hear.

"Not here. I'm too loud." The orphans were a thin paper screen away. He didn't want them to hear... or smell anything. The words were simple. A hundred percent not something any female infiltrator worth her salt would use against the likes of Not-Totoro. But none of those infiltrators had bodies crafted by demons. And after the high of a near-death experience, Not-Totoro was too softened for any real resistance.

"Dirty." The inn-keeper grinned. "Just like a bitch aren't you? You like to howl for papa, don't you? Like to play dirty. I know just the place."

Not-Totoro took the lead. Naruto followed mutely, amazed that he wasn't already on the floor, reintroducing his post-digested breakfast to the world. He decided to distract himself by focusing on surveying the layout of the Ryokan. A logical thing to do, since he'd be taking over as landlord soon enough.

It was small, rundown, with empty rooms and non-existent business. Typical floor plan for a budget hotel-wannabe. A U-shape hugged a garden in the middle. The trees were wilting and the bushes in the midst of total invasion over the wall and pathway. Two floors and an attic, no one creaking the board upstairs, probably no one breathing the air up there either. Which, while maybe convenient for Naruto, really pushed the question as to why this tub of lard could afford luxury-class dope on a daily basis? Not-Totoro looked like he barely lifted a finger to care for his measly meal bait.

"Nice place you got here." He took a shot in the dark. "How'd you run by it?"

Not-Totoro looked at him with his beady little eyes. "You heard? What? Did you get that sorry son-of-a-bitch Ginjiro to spill that to you? What'd you do? Did your whore things to him for free too? Nah... I'd expect he gets that for free every day, morning, lunch, and dinner. Maybe a little sandwich for supper, you and your whore's unwanted gets." He stopped before a small sunken door, opened it with a click. "You want in? Guess what, it's not free. You gotta sing real nice for me before you get any. Get in."

Not-Totoro gripped him by the shoulder and pushed him in. Naruto went quietly. He didn't present his back to just anyone, but one had to act a fool to bait another fool. The door led to stairs, which went down instead of up. No light but the weak reflection of the torch Not-Totoro carried. No sound but the sweaty huff and puff of a man who rarely ever got his exercises done.

"You got a basement? You're full of surprises aren't you?" And by the look of it, a multi-level basement too. He got no reply for his cheek, but he wasn't expecting any. "What have you got down here? The illegal stuff, I mean." That got a grunt and Naruto knew he was pushing it. Didn't matter. The guy was going to eat dust soon enough.

The moment they hit pit bottom, Not-Totoro drawled behind him. " Alright, lose the clothes."

Naruto flexed one hand. He had a plan in his head and he was going to do it slow and calm. _Real_ slow and calm. He needed this house clean for the children upstairs. And he needed for this man pig to spill a little before he went to meet his maker, at least enough to make a suitable guise for the new owner of Tonari Inn.

That plan went busted the exact moment Not-Totoro decided he was done with waiting and grabbed Naruto in the place where his old body didn't have. "I said lose it, bitch."

Something went 'pop' in Naruto's head. A little something went busted along with his plan. Could have been his control. He wasn't sure. He was distracted with the wet 'popping' sounds breaking through the cold silence of the basement.

Like baked popcorn. But smelt like blood.

"Shit." He withdrew his hand. Not-Totoro slid down the floor, spewing violently from where his head used to be. The adult human body contained approximately 5.6 litres of blood. Right now, all 5.6 litres of that blood was escaping through the fist-shaped hole in Not-Totoro's head.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Naruto wiped his dirty hand on his shirt. No use. His shirt was already drenched. A normal heart has the pumping power of 1.3 watts, and a dying heart so much more. He was standing too close, and a little too shaky to avoid the downpour.

He took one step away from the jerking corpse, then several more, cursing as he went. _Dunderhead! You lost control. Like an amateur. So much for having a plan. Now who's going to tell you how to be little miss New Owner, huh? What are you going to say when the old customers arrive? Give them a little dead-man FAQ?_

"Aww... shit." There was a strange panic in his head and suddenly he was a little more aware of his female body. Far more than he would have liked. Prancing around, playing a whore's role in this whore's body suddenly seemed a lot more stupid than half an hour ago.

'_Have I taken my medicine today?_' He thought as he tried to breathe slowly through his mouth_. 'Yessir, I have. 50 grams of THX-1138. Daily dose. Enough to render a person brain-dead. Enough to cut off any funny female thing in this __brain.'_

Still, it took him a full five minutes to calm down, during which he briefly considered taking another shot. When the first second of the sixth minute rolled by, his training kicked in. And the first thought that came to his mind was:

'_Are the children alright?'_

He shook out of his stupor and shot up the stair. When he came through the basement door, he turned and locked it, pulled out the key, and broke it in half. He didn't know if there was anyone beside Not-Totoro in this building. He guessed 'no' but it was best not to take chances. That corpse would stay down there, undiscovered until somebody with either a second key or demon-induced strength came along to open it up.

He was halfway across the garden when he heard it. The sound of somebody banging on the front door.

_Shit. Who?_

His eyes shot left, in the direction of the door, then right, to the room where he'd left the orphans.

_No. No time._

He headed left, his mind racing. Miss new owner? No. Too soon. Not-Totoro had mentioned a Ginjiro. He may have placed that order right today. A man didn't just decide to up and move out of his house within a day. Whore? Not gonna work if the person banging on the door was Ginjiro himself. And whores didn't go around in blood-soaked clothing.

Yeah. The blood. He had to take care of that too.

He stopped abruptly. What if he just ignored them? The person in front of his door may just decide that Not-Totoro was not home and left...

... or they might go away and start squawking to the next guy they knew about a lil' innkeeper who had suddenly gone missing. And they might come back, bringing others with them. Whatever got them to come in the middle of a rainstorm probably was important enough for a second visit.

Naruto started moving again.

He wasn't doing a solo act anymore. He'd got kids. Best to deal with this leak right now before it started to spread.

He made a dash for the kitchen and nearly yanked the door off its hinges when he opened it. In one corner was a brick stove with stacks of briquette charcoal to a side. Pool of unswept soot not too far off. He had blood on his hair, blood on his face, blood on his clothes. He needed to deal with the blood. He dove right into the pile of soot, rolling several rounds for good measure. When he got back up, there was more black, gray, and brown on him than there was red.

"A maid. I'm the new maid. I'm cooking. My master is not home. What ya want?" He mumbled.

On the wall over the cooker hung a set of kitchen knives and some half plucked chickens. The knives were too obvious. He didn't want to appear a threat. He took a pen-sized stick of charcoal and slipped it up his sleeve. The chicken he took just in case whoever at the door was keen enough to spot the leftover red on him. It completed his image nicely.

The front door banged impatiently. "Coming! Coming!" He yelled as he ran to get it. The second he pulled the latch free, the door slammed wide opened and a man walked in from the storm. No. Not a man. A samurai. And not one of those junky gate guards either, but an officer of some rank.

"Who are you?" He eyeballed Naruto, raindrops running down his goatee like mad and pooling on the floor. "Where's Hachin?"

So Not-Totoro had a name. Big deal. Naruto dropped to the floor and into a full kowtowing position. The raw chicken was still in his hand, right beside his head. "Samurai-dono. Hachin-sama is not home."

For about two minutes, nothing but silence answered him, and he knew, from experience, that he was being sized up. From this position, he saw nothing but a pair of feet, caked ankle deep in river mud.

"I didn't see you around here the last time I came." Goatee said at last.

"I was just..."

"I didn't say you can speak." One foot shoot across the floor and hit him square in the face. Naruto squealed and shook his head theatrically. All the while, his eyes hadn't left Goatee for even one nanosecond. A question blared in his head.

_What was Not-Totoro doing that could pull a high-rank samurai all the way through a storm to this shitty little inn?_

He remained where he was on the floor. This way, he could see where Goatee was and still hide where the bruises were forming rapidly across his jaws, then disappearing just as fast. The feet moved in his ground-level vision, leaving puddles behind them. He heard and saw the door closed and locked.

"You're cooking?" A sandaled foot nudged the chicken out of his hand. He peeked up from under his eyelashes and saw Goatee sniffing the air. "I don't smell anything... nor did I see any smoke."

Good observation. The charcoal stick burned in his awareness. Goatee's bare ankles were only a few feet across. One text-book move and he would have this samurai on the floor, crying uncle as he pulled the tendons out of his cut-off legs... but he can't. He didn't know if anyone knew Goatee was here, and that black-hole of intel was the only thing that kept the charcoal stick inside his sleeve.

The feet moved again. Naruto saw Goatee amble along the wall, stop just beside the shoe cabinet, took out a small oil paper bag. There was a sharp new smell in the air. Powdery. Arid. He recognized it at once. Dope. The same type growing in the abandoned fields of Woodsmen Ville.

Goatee opened the bag, took a deep whiff, and grimaced. "I'm nearly out of it." Then he turned back at Naruto. "You know... you didn't hide that blood nearly as well as you thought you did."

Naruto said nothing. He was concentrating on the tiny white spots in Goatee's beard. What could he say that would make this bastard spill a little? Why did he come here? Did anyone know he was here? Had he left some clues behind?

What could he say that would make this bastard safe to kill?

Then Goatee did something that stopped all his thought processes. He kicked a shoe across the room. Small one. Size two-and-a-half. Full of mud and travel-worn holes. The exact one that was plastered to Hanzo's heel just thirty minutes before. "What's this?" Goatee drawled, voice full of amusement. Goatee's black pancreas-bean eyes danced all over Naruto.

Naruto must have made some noises, because the next thing he knew, he was skidding across the floor. His head hit the wall once, then twice as Goatee's hand closed around his throat and smashed him a good one.

"Which gang sent you?" Goatee sneered as he dragged Naruto up to his eye level. The charcoal stick rolled in his palm eagerly, and his fingers twitched with anticipation...

_...But not yet..._

He could see Goatee's sword lolling halfway from its scabbard, just shy of hitting air with its full length. Yet the fact that it was not fully out was telling him something else, something dead useful.

"Not going to chirp, are we?" A hand ran up and down Naruto's body, searching. "The Red Hand? Scarly Skatar? Or one of those Northern bastards? I can keep guessing.. but... well, it doesn't matter. I don't have the time today, and I'm going to have you sing one way or another." But just a minute after he said this, Goatee's hand hit something that made him pause. "... a woman?" With full expectation, Naruto watched a peculiar expression blanketed Goatee's face and the tension bleeding out. Bad move, that. But Goatee obviously thought otherwise as he scoffed and sneered. "Of all things... they sent a woman. Well I suppose it's only fitting for Hachin to die by a wench's hand." The grip around Naruto's throat lessened, just a little, but it would be more than enough. "I never liked him anyway."

Then he grabbed Naruto by his hair, now more shit-colour than gold, and dragged him in, heading for the cellar in the other side of the Ryokan, where a body lay, slowly expiring in the bowel of its depth.

"Let me guess where you put the body..." Goattee ranted as he walked, so confident that he hadn't bothered to check where Naruto's hands were. "... If I were you, I'd put it in... dumdumdum... the cellar!..." It was a fool's move. A veteran wouldn't have stopped the body check. A veteran would have tied... or chopped his hands off, just to be on the safe side... or at least have him put them somewhere they can be seen. But then again, for all intents and purpose, Naruto was now a scrawny, dirty wench, with nothing but rags and kitchen dirt on him, and was perhaps sent by some ragtag underground group vying for territory. But even that only made him desperate, not dangerous, and definitely not of any note for an elite member of the high-ranking military personnel.

_**This **_was the exact reason why female operatives always had double the chances of success in infiltration missions.

Throughout the entity of their short walk from the entrance to the basement door, Naruto put up a show worthy of awards. He cried, scratched, and begged, and endured Goatee's monologue. His performance was noisy, but luckily, Mo and Hanzo's room was in a different direction of where they were going. He only hoped the chidren... or the frogs had the sense to stay put until he finished dealing with this mess.

He let Goatee slammed him back first into the cellar door. Yet another mistake. Too many openings. Too easy to exploit. But he kept up the water-work, hoping that the samurai would let slip something useful.

In the end, it was Aki who made his decision. At the exact moment when Goatee drew out a key from his pocket, Naruto saw Aki hopping around the corner and directly into his view, a mere five feet away from them.

He heard a single 'thump' in his heart and saw Aki's mouth open in shock and horror. His hands shot out in a perfect vertical V, fore and middle fingers curling like talons. His left hand struck Goatee's right hand at the same time his right struck Goatee's left. The hand on his throat spasmed as its wrist bones shattered in a shower of tiny cracks. The cellar key dropped when the hand holding it suffered the same fate. Goatee's eyes were just on the first nanoseconds of widening when Naruto's knee jerked up and collided with his groin.

The first syllable of Aki's scream was peeking out her throat when Naruto's hands curved from Goatee's broken wrists. The right one delivered a text-book throat punch, collapsing the airway. The left one flew higher. The charcoal stick slid out from his sleeve, hissing joyfully as it sliced through the air, into Goatee' right eardrum, through the brain in-between, and out the other eardrum. Not a second later, his right hand finished its reverse trajectory right underneath the falling key, catching it before it hit the ground.

Goatee jerked once, made a funny noise, then went down. And then it was just Naruto and a hyperventilating frog in the hallway. Naruto's eyes slipped pass Aki to the corner behind her. No one there. Good. It was too early for the orphans to see stuffs like this.

"Aki." The frog squeaked. This was her first time in the human world. It was her first time at anything really. "B... boss?" She managed at last.

"Where're the kids?"

"In their room. I.. I barred them, just in case."

"You did good." He nodded, satisfied. "Eat some sugar. There's some in the kitchen, I think. That will take the edge of the shock of. When you're finished, go to the children. And stay there this time. I'll be right back."

He watched Aki skitter off, happy not to be here. She'd get used to it. They all did. When he was sure she was out of hearing range, he turned back to Goatee and studied him intently.

"You didn't have to die, you know." He said after about five minutes of staring. "You were a jackass, but I've seen a lot of jackasses in my line of work, so I don't mind. If you'd just given me enough time..." _for a memory-tampering seal._ "... I woulda let you go."

He opened the basement door with Goatee's key, kicked Goatee a sound one and watched his corpse roll down the stair. Then he locked the door and headed for the kitchen. Aki wasn't in the kitchen when he got to it, apparently already done with the sugar. He found her footprints on the soot-covered floor, and a match box by the oven. The oil lamp he found hanging from the utensil rack. He lit the lamp with the match and returned to the basement.

He counted the levels of basement this time around. Three, including the one where Hachin and Goatee now lay decomposing. When he got to the last level, he found something surprising.

A plastic switch in the wall. With a tail of electric cords from one end.

He studied it, mildly puzzled by its presence... and what it meant. Cheap polystyrene by the look of it. He knew there was electricity in this era. There were color cameras too, as attested by the pictures of the genin-age Sandaime with his Nidaime and Shodaime teachers. So there ought to be something as basic an infrastructure as electricity. But he was under the impression that it was used solely by the ultra-rich and the military. Not-Totoro, including his lil' illegal business, hadn't looked like he had the dough for a running line of magic-light. And most of all, why in a basement?

He flipped it over and suddenly the basement was flooded with blue-hued light. And here came the bigger surprise.

The room was mid-size, a square-ish seven by eight. Light tubes ran the edges of the ceiling, powered by a battery tub walled into a corner. On one side, two corpses and a puddle of blood. That was no surprise. But on the other, glittering in the shine of burning Halogen were blocks of ice. And on top of that ice... tonnes of white powder, packed neatly into translucent plastic parcels.

The cold air breathed by his ears, bringing with it the same arid scent Goatee'd worn.

Naruto dipped his hand into one parcel, broke through the obviously hand-made plastic casing, brought it back up, sniffed it. Then licked it off his white-tipped fingers. The taste that seared through his brain was one that he had trained himself to recognize with only milligrams diluted in water.

Yaba Ice. The same stuff that grew on the steppes of Woodsmen Ville, already refined for market use. No question about it.

He spat out a gob of the stuff, careful not to swallow any. He spared a glance at the corpse that used to be Not-Totoro.

"So... you're not only a pig, but also a dopedealer huh? Well, I guess that goes hand-in-hand."

He walked to the back of the room, where the battery tub lay. He gave it a nudge. It quivered under his foot. No big deal here. It was a primitive nickel-cadmium type that was popular about a hundred years before his time. A typical '_your house alighted for about a day or so before you have to bring it in for a recharge at the cost of half of your kidney'_ that rich people in cut-off towns liked to use to flounce their wealth about.

In short, nothing to rise an eye-brow over.

But the box next to it. _**That**_ was something else. A mere twenty-four hours after that moment, Naruto would be questioning himself. Why did he notice that box next to the battery tub? Why did he open it and began all the things that followed? Maybe he was just being thorough, an after-effect of being forced to kill two people in a row without a clear goal other than to protect the orphans, sheer instinct to take stock of the situation.

But all that didn't change what he saw in the box once it was opened. It was wood-made, with little protection other than a flimsy lock and a slat of steel on top. Too easy to crack. Inside its 7-7-7 dimension were stacks of neatly tied treasury notes. He picked up one and studied it. Its smoothness under his fingers told of high-quality mass production line. The stamp on top was the ever-recognisable national insignia of Fire nation. Some short lines to declare its originator the royal court of hi no Kuni. And last, a big fat '**one**' followed by three '**zero**'.

One thousand Ryo.

As practicality demanded, accounting and macro-economy were the first two classes a Hokage in training needed to learn. Money. The grit and bolt of a nation. _**No matter the place or the time, money talks**_. And knowing how to handle one's army financially took precedent over the movie prime-time stuffs of external relations and super-power soldiers.

One thousand Ryo.

In his time, it took ten Ryo to buy a stick of ice-cream off a street vendor. That was because they were using the trust system. Trust in ye Gods, and trust in your nation to uphold the power of your printed paper being able to feed you and your family, to buy you things like security, fame, and happiness. In his time, a Ryo was worth as much as the power of the nation printed upon its face.

But a hundred years before, they used a different system, a modification of the old 'Taeng' system, where money stood for 'money' and nobody's power.

A Ryo here was worth approximately 0.6 ounce of gold. One thousand Ryo. 600 ounce. Thirthy-seven and a half pound... of pure gold. Half of Mo's weight. A normal person's several lifetimes of saving.

He put the note back, closed the box, and briefly considered burning the whole thing. But this wasn't the chump change he'd dumped down the sewers just to teach the orphan a lesson.

How many notes were in that box? His fingers remembered the fine thickness of the note. The box was seven inch deep with a surface area to fit snugly one note. About... three hundred... three fifty?

Thirty-seven and a half pound... times three-fifty.

He was never really good with numbers. That kind of jobs went to the accountants, not Hokage. But the number that came through in his head was a staggering one. About eleven thousand pounds. He dulled the number in his mind. About eleven thousand pounds... of pure gold... in a form that suggested it was insured by the monarchy of Fire nation itself. Treasury notes that promised its owner a portion of the national coffer.

He sat down with his back to the 'gold box' and watched Not-Totoro rot.

"I can't imagine a guy like you with that kind of money." Not-Totoro oozed pus from his head. "I think you would have run. No way you would have stayed in this place, renting cheap whores to pass your days. You would have placed your bet, rolled up your stuff, and run to high hell. You wouldn't give a shit what the owner of that box had to say... because you're a punk and you don't have enough sense to count your chances... you would have run."

He touched his lips with his fingers, dearly needing a cigarette, then remembered that his fingers were caked with dirt and blood. He wiped his hand down his shirt, but that only made it dirtier.

"But that's the whole point, isn't it? This isn't your money. And because I can't imagine the kind of boss who would trust you with this much money, I'm guessing this guy..." He looked at Goatee, whose neck bent in a funny angle, a result of his trip down three levels of stairs. ".. was here to relieve you of that. I'm guessing that money was supposed to stay with you for a night, and then it was supposed to go..."

But it didn't go, did it? It stayed, here, with him. And while Naruto was sitting on his arse, discussing the fine points of monetary system management with two stiffening corpses, some drug boss he didn't know, some drug boss out there was asking. _Where's my money? Where's my goddamned money?_

And in the end, after the whole rough and tumble, there was only one question that mattered.

_If you knew there was somebody out there afoot that had a third class truck weight of your gold, at what point would you stop looking for them?_

_That's right. There ain't no such point._

Naruto stood up, dusted his pants for gesture's shake, and began to work.

First, he pulled Not-Totoro out of his mess. Then he pulled Goatee beside Not-Totoro. He stripped the corpses down until they were stark naked, and then he sat there, rifling through their stuffs and watching curiously at what his ex-body looked like.

He found two sniff bags from Not-Totoro and a set of sweaty, putrid smelling day-wear kimono. A fancy-looking fan. A smoking pipe. Several sets of keys and what looked like a doctor's prescription to a 3-month's diet... for the goodness of his heart.

Goatee had a lot of knives, steel, bronze, and all in very good quality, the regularly-taken-care of quality. He also had the schedule of District One patrol route and weekly training on Monday. An identity card strapped to his belt. A good-sized katana. Looked like an heirloom. It hadn't gotten even one nick on it. The tsurugi on the other hand looked like it enjoyed daily use.

The last item he pulled out from Goatee was an instruction straight from the boss who Goatee got his second pay check from, ordering him to transport the annual fund from a safe-house located West of Yogekisha port town straight to headquarter. Goatee was to do it in secret, no drums and fanfare, and he was to do it within a night. No worry about his official Samurai boss. That one was bought out too, probably at triple Goatee's price. There was a map attached with a lot of notations and silly code words.

Naruto perused the instruction and the map for about ten minutes. When he stood up to leave the cellar, he already knew he was going to have to kill a lot of people... today. He just didn't know who yet.

* * *

**End chapter 7 - part 1**

* * *

First of all, I am sorry for such a long wait. More than half a year. I got emails from people wondering if I was sick or if I was still alive. I even got two emails (on the same date) telling me my fic has been plagiarised. There are two reasons why I've been absent for such a long time.

The first one is that at around February-March of this year, I had a relapse of health problem, so I was pretty much unable to write anything.

The second one, I've just recently been promoted in my line of work. It's just about several months ago. During the time that I adapt to my new duties, I also couldn't write anything for I had no time then.

Sorry for the wait, but, it is what it is. I guess we can only hope that these things won't happen again in the future (except the promotion part). I had planned to publish chapter 7 on the one year birthday of Tis Femina too, but I guess we all missed that. That's alright, the second birthday will come in no time.

Also, to address this question: "**Will Tis Femina ever be abandoned?**". I guess this is the kind of questions a lot of authors have problems with. I've seen many who swore up and down that they wouldn't abandon their story, but still did. I'm not going to do the same thing and promise any thing. As you can already see what I've already written, Tis Femina has a sprawling plot line that will span 10 years of story time, from the beginning to the time when the two clans Uchiha and Senju agreed on their truce. Before I even started writing the first chapter, I knew it was going to take years to finish. And, if we can all be realistic, I'm a working adult whose freetime in between work and family is pretty rare. For stories this long, it's so easy to grow bored or frustrated. So, the chance that I may lose interest one day is there.

With that announced though, I will say too, that that chance is pretty small, since I've already finished writing the skeletal plot line. One of the two possible endings have been written. I've even shown it to my betas (don't know if they thought is good though). I've also written a lot of future sequences that I really love (and love to see how my readers react to them too, especially the part where Naruto meets Madara for the second time in this time line.). So, until I've already finished with those lovely sequence and post them up here, I'm not going to stop.

* * *

**Why two parts?** As you can already see, chapter 7 is splitted into two parts. Why? Simple. First, I didn't plan to write it so long. I had thought it about 17-18 k words, pretty reasonable length. But then again, my estimation has always been bad. Well, after a while, I realised that the finished chapter 7 would be at least 30 k words long.

That's just too much. A chapter like that is just too exhausting, for the readers, the writer, and the betas (who I know have been getting restless as of late. Really sorry guys).

I haven't updated for more than half a year, and I didn't want to prolong the wait any further. And, I didn't want to rush till the finish line. So, the solution, split it in two, in an appropriate point. Let the readers feast on the first part and buy me time to finish the second part.

Chapter 7 part 2 is currently at about 7 k long, and it should be finished within 2-3 weeks.

* * *

**The result of the poll.** for any body who's interested. The poll "Do you prefer long chapter, long wait, or short chapter, short wait?" is finished. The result, surprisingly, favors long chapters. But, to cater to both side, I will, from the next chapter, reduce the average length of a chapter. The new chapters will be a compromise between volume and wait time between updates.

I plan to have it average down to about 7-12 k per chapter for every month or so. That's what I had planned. But after my promotion... well, lets all hope I can do as I plan.

* * *

**The city Kokkyo** is based on several real life cities. The architecture, the culture, and the mix between industrialization and old-style tradition are based on Tokyo during the Meiji period and China during the Opium Wars period. The underground side of the city is based on the modern coastal city Pattaya of Thailand, where I lived for two years (on top of club house that would never shut up). Pattaya (don't hate me Thais, for I speak the truth) is officially a tourist city. For anybody who live there though, it's a scary and funny mix of Thai gangs, Russian human traders, Japanese Yakuza, and the Chinese Triads... due to Thailand lax visa laws.

That's all, guys. Will see you in 2-3 weeks. Have fun.

Sythe


	8. Chapter 7 part 2: Rat's City

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto.

Part II: Uchiha

II. Kiiroi Kami

**Chapter 7:**** Rat's City (part 2)**

"_The rat ran away from men's city of light, down the drain bars, down the waste pipes. And there, deep under men's city of light, among the trash and the fifth, the rat was king."_

* * *

He swept the perimeter clean before returning to the orphans. Swept it clean until he was sure there was not another living soul in the building, nor any surveillance devices. It was only basic security protocol to do so.

The moment he showed up before the orphan's door, the door itself busted open and out flew two human missiles. One hit him in the belly, the other was lighter so it hit in the face, flinging snots and baby tears into his hair.

"You're back!" That was Mo.

"What did that bastard do to you?"

"You're safe! Oh god, you're safe! I thought... Oh! Waaaaaaarghhhhhhh! I thought..." Uh... he wasn't sure who that was from. His vision was obscured by one of the orphans. Which one he didn't know, but he could guess.

He tried walking in, but walking with two wailing kids clinging to him was a lot more difficult than he'd imagined. He thought the two frogs were somewhere on him too but they were small and weighted as much as a feather, so they didn't really count. After his third failed try, just reaching passed the door, he had to use dirty tactics.

"Hey, hey! Are you crying Hanzo?"

The bundle clinging to his face froze all of a sudden, then an indignant wail. "I... am... not!" and the next second, Hanzo had already jumped off him and he could see again.

"Ooh... let me see. Your eyes are red. Your snots... oh, you have purple snots... that's new. You're full of surprising colors, Hanzo." He pulled Mo up from his waist, and carried her to the bed, set her down on the old cotton sheets. At least those were clean.

"I was not crying! That was Mo! She cried like a baby. Well, she's a girl, and girls always cry. So I thought... you know. Boys don't cry, but I could pretend to and she won't feel so ashamed once you're back."

"Hey!" Mo threw a pillow at Hanzo, who endured it with all the dignity of a man. "Your shuriken does not hurt me! You weak ninja girl!"

"Hey, hey, kids! Settle down."

The orphans quieted at once and looked at him with expectant eyes. Naruto felt a split second of insecurity. He hadn't washed the blood and dirt off him, and now he'd tainted them with dead men's blood. _Way to go, bubbar._

"Umm..." What could he say to two children? That he'd just killed two people and appropriated a house for them? And he'd have to go around killing a lot more tonight so no yakuza would ever find his way within a fifty-meter perimeter of them? "... are you guys hungry?"

"So hungry I could eat a horse!" Hanzo replied.

"You've never seen a horse, you liar! Even my family hasn't got one!"

"Well, I've heard of them!"

Naruto put a hand on each of them, stopping the argument before it came full-blown. "Hey, can I trust you guys to be good ninja?"

Mo nodded solemnly, and Hanzo gave his affirmative with bravado.

"Well, there's food in the kitchen. Eat anything you want, but don't touch the sugar. In the north wing, there's a bath house with hot water. Wash from the basins or the tubs, but don't touch the bath or you'll catch a cold. Mo, I'm trusting you to be the older one here. Be the big girl, won't ya?"

Mo shot Hanzo a triumphant look.

"Once you're done, don't go wander around. Go straight back here. You hear?" He waited for their nods before he finished. "Well, that's it. Now go, scram."

Hanzo was out of the door the moment he finished, squealing with boyish laughter. "Last one is a rotten egg, Mo!" But Mo, now she was a different matter. The girl looked at him with eyes that understood too much.

"What about that man?" It was heart-wrenching to see a child grow up so fast. But in this world, this was the only way to live.

"He's gone. I persuaded him to go. He won't be back so don't you go worrying about him." He brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. "Go eat. Do anything you want." Be a child for one more day. "The house is ours now. Just be careful, don't go outside. And keep an eye out for Hanzo. You're the big one now, you hear?"

With that, Mo ran out of the room, chasing after Hanzo. He was grateful that she pushed no further. The pretence, at least, was whole-hearted from his side. Then it was only him and the frogs in an empty room, and the real discussion began.

At first, there was a moment of silence, like they didn't know what to say. They had an idea in their lil' froggy heads, but they didn't know how to put em' down to questions yet. Then Zaki started with the most mundane of them all.

"What we gonna do now, boss?"

Naruto turned Goatee's key in his palm. He trusted Zaki's twin sister had updated him on what she had seen in front of the cellar door.

"This is what we're going to do..." He spoke at his mind straightened the skeletal of a plan. "... I'm going to put this house under Blackout. You know what it is?"

"The grade A concealment Fuin jutsu?"

"Yep. You know what that meant, don't you?" That meant incoming threats, for if there was none, he wouldn't have bothered with such flamboyant seal. "It will take me fifteen min to set up. In the meantime, this is what I want you to do." He lay down the key in front of them. "There are two bodies down the third floor of the basement. Smoke em. Whatever you do, I don't want a trace of them left for anybody to find..."

Especially inquisitive children trying to find what secrets their new house had.

"... Before you do that, however, make sure to memorize the one with the goatee. The thin one. We'll be needing that face tonight. Keep an eye on the children. Don't let them come anywhere near the cellar. I don't want an explanation that could be postponed for another ten years right now. Once you're done with that. Come up to the second floor, in the room center of this house, and I'll fill you in with the rest."

.

.

.

_Now here's a question to think about. Was it possible for a monster like him, indestructible body and a raw sixteen years of battle experience, to ever feel scared? _

_The answer is yes. A whole lot of times. A whole lot of damned times._

The door to the center room on the second floor opened with a _creakk_. The old oak wood floor opened up like butter under Goatee's best knife with some protest of sawdust. And all it took for Naruto to complete the Blackout was a mere five minutes.

A flash of White nature chakra to boot up the seal and he was good to go.

He looked out the window of the room. The storm raged outside in the desolate landscape of Rust Town. The view was exquisite, as far as strategic point went. If anyone came up this house in a hundred and eighty degree view of this window, within a hundred foot distance, he could be put down with a well-placed bolt from a well-used crossbow. Naruto had no doubt somebody paid good money to make it so.

He took another five minutes to prepare another seal, a one-way emergency transportation straight to Mt. Myobokuzan. Unchartable, untraceable, and set to activate at a drop of Yinyang frog's blood, or poison, whichever was present at the time.

Even when he was finished with the second seal, the frog twins were nowhere to be seen. That was fine. This was their first run as professional ninja summons. He expected them to bungle a little... or a lot. But that was fine too.

He didn't wait for them. Instead, he went down the second floor and headed to the bath house. The orphans weren't there so they must still be feasting in the kitchen. He washed himself in the shower, using only cold water and saving the hot one for the kids. The blood and dirt came off him in clots, and he had to punt the drain-hole open three times for the water to run off. Once he was done, he found himself a set of clean clothes. Pants and a half-sleeve shirt. They came in free-size, as everything in a cheap hotel usually was. He found a belt in what must be Not-Totoro's room. It ran three loops around his waist until snapping close. He stuck Goatee's knives in-between the loops and stuck Goatee's map and instruction sheet in the folds of the bandage he used to bind his chest. Then he went to the entrance area to check if there were rain boots and coat his size.

Once he was sure he had everything he needed, he went back upstairs. This time, the two frogs were there, looking too green and too young to be in the same room with him.

"Hey..." He greeted them. "... how'd it go?"

"It went alright." Zaki replied. He might have been honest, but there was a tremble in his voice that said otherwise.

Naruto sat down on the bed and fixed them a gaze.

"Well..." Zaki coughed. "... I might have vomited... a bit. But we cleaned up after ourselves."

"Okay." He nodded with approval. "That's better." He stood up, walked across the room and picked up a water pitcher on top of the drawer. He pulled himself a glass and drank it. The smell of cheap hotel toothpaste on his tongue.

"You want?" He offered the frogs with the pitcher.

"No thanks. We're good."

A failed attempt to postpone the inevitable. He set the water pitcher down and walked to the window. He opened it. The storm roared into his face and wet a section of the floor. But it was better now. The air in the room had lost its suffocating stuffiness.

He let the silence do its work for a few more minutes, let it pressed down on the frogs and watched how they coped on their first run. Not bad, by the look of it. He closed one wing of the window, and spoke with a voice not loud, but clear enough to pierce the background noise of the rainstorm.

"I'll be frank with you. I haven't got the slightest clue what's going on here. If you have questions, I don't know if I have the answers." He let it sink in. "But this is what I know. In approximately half an hour, I expect you two to be ready for battle."

He held out a hand and stopped the barrage of questions from blowing right in his face.

"I got this from Goatee down there." He showed the frogs Goatee's instruction sheet.

"I'm not sure how much you understand, since this is your first time in the human world." Naruto sip from his glass and watched the frogs poring over the instruction sheet. "But you're probably wondering, what's this got to do with fighting? Well, I'll make it short, since we don't have much time. By my approximation, at the basement of this house is about a ton of dope. "

"Dope?"

"Drug. Hallucination Dust. Nerve Jerk. Happy Fix. Some humans love it. Some humans can't live without it. Don't ask me why. I guess it makes them really happy."

"I don't get it. Dust doesn't make me happy. Flies do."

"Well, don't dwell on that. It's not that important. The important thing is... the business of selling it is illegal... in most states. And the people doing these business, well, they aint a bunch you'd want to have over for dinner. So here's the thing. According to the instructions here, we are sitting in their safe-house. We are sitting on top of probably six months worth of their product. And to add insult to injury, I've just beaten their transporter to their elephant-sized pot of gold, and killed him too while I was at it. I killed the caretaker of their safe-house too, by the way."

Naruto clapped his hands almost jovially. "So, that is the premise of our mission today. We've grabbed a tiger's tail by mistake and now we need to deal with the pissed-off end. There are many ways to solve this problem, but I prefer snuffing the tiger out before it snuffs us out. Do you get what I'm saying?"

Five minutes of silence crawled by, then Aki croaked.

"Well, what about we let go off the tail for now and just burrow? Grandma told me you have more than enough chakra to power the Blackout for months. We could just stay in here. Unless all my lessons about human warfare resources were wrong, I don't think it's easy finding a seal unbinder who can go toe-to-toe with you in this ninja-unfriendly city. The tiger can't get in. It can't even see us, the way I see it. What's it going to do? Snarl us to death?"

A naive question. As all those who entered the ninja world with their childhood at their back. One just can't keep his hands clean once he was already in the deep. But s good one, none the less.

"Yeah! I agree with that." Zaki chimed in. "Say, if they can't find us for a long time, they might just up and leave us alone. Just for how long can they keep looking for something they can't even see? They probably have other things to do?"

And it all came back to that question once again.

_**If**__ you knew there was somebody out there afoot that had a third class truck weight of your gold, at what point would you stop looking for them? _

"Let me put it this way..." He threaded his hands together under his nose, and looked the frogs in the eyes. "... If, right now, I sent you two back to Mt. Myobokuzan. It's only going to take a minute. See, I already have the seal up and ready. And once you are there, the only thing you can see, all the things you can see, actually, is a just a smoking crater."

The twins stiffened.

"You don't even find the bodies. But you know they are dead, because if your parents, your grandparents, your broodmates, cousins, uncles, aunts, your neighbours even... If they were alive, they would never let this happen. If that was what you see when you come home_, at what point, would you quit looking for the one who did this to you?"_

They looked like they were slapped; their mouths hung open, then close, then open. But no words came out.

"You can't even question if they exist, do you? You can't see them. You don't know who they are, what they look like, where they come from, and why they did it. But you know that they are out there, somewhere, because the place where your home used to be is gone, and there had to be someone responsible for that. _At what point would you quit looking for them?_"

"You can't... you can't compare. It's too different."

"Is that so? Are you sure? Would you bet on it? Your lives, mine, and two human kids who don't know nothing about what we do but think they do anyway. Would you?" He pressed, succinctly.

The twins had no reply to that, but by the look in their eyes, he could see that they weren't sold.

"You must think my comparison is unfair. You probably are right. What amount of money can compare to the lives of your kin? From where you stand right now, you don't see what's so important about a pile of metal you haven't even seen before. You don't see any need for it, nor could you see anyone dying over it. The number means nothing to you."

For the rich and privileged, poverty and desperation are incomprehensible. The twins, being reserved and trained from childhood to be his companions, had only seen the best of this world.

"Well, I could tell you right now, with that much money, I could buy Mt. Myobokuzan fifty times over. I wouldn't, but I could. That's how much it is. And losing it, to some people, is equivalent to you two seeing only a crater where your home used to be. I don't know what they teach you before sending you to me, but the first lesson you need to learn about human is that the depth of man's greed and selfishness... is immeasurable." He set the glass down and picked up Goatee's instruction. "The symbol here..." A rat with one raised paw. "... says it's from the largest gang in this part of town. What we took probably wouldn't kill them. But, in the underworld, honour and face held equal sway with money. They wouldn't survive if their enemies were to hear about this. The conclusion... they would tear this city down to find us... or die at the hands of rival gangs."

"I... I see."

_No, you don't. _

"I could do as you suggested. Stay in this house and not come out until they are finished by their competitors. But a big thing like them? Big enough to have eleven thousand pounds of gold in one of their more remote safe houses. Big enough to buy out high-ranking samurai. Big enough to build a maze encompassing three mountains just to protect one drug plantation. Do you want to guess what they could do if they're desperate? Better yet, do you want to live out that guess? And even if they do die out before they could reach us? What then? Money that big doesn't just disappear unaccounted for. And people with skills like mine don't stay nameless for long... even in the underworld. Before you know it, we'll have more dogs coming after us than we should have."

He folded the instruction to a tiny rectangle, and put it in his pocket. "I am not saying that I can't deal with them if push comes to shove. I can. It's what I do for a living. But there's a difference between rookies..." _like yo_u. "... and veterans. And that difference is that a rookie will think, oh shuck, they're just a bunch of big time pickpockets, what can they do to me? Or... I'm too strong with my whatever bazillion jutsu. They'll never touch me. A rookie will think like that, and when he's caught with his pants down, making too many mistakes, then it's too late for him. But a veteran, you won't even know he exists. He'll make damn sure you don't, unless he wants you to, not because he's scared, but because he understands this is a job, and not a way to show the world his cock is the biggest of the bunch."

They looked subdued, but there was no other way about it. Like the orphans, the twins had lived in a bubble for a long time, and it needed to be busted. He was going into the fire zone within an hour and he needed soldiers who'd jump at his command, not rookies who would second-guess their captain every step of the way.

He let them tasted a few minutes of silence. It tasted like sawdust, in his experience, to realize you look like a bunch of kiddie junkies on a power high to your superior, but he would be a terrible team lead if he left them at that. Here was the part that he fired them up, here was the part of a military-grade pep-talk.

"If this was five years ago..." He leaned against the wall, folded his hand and fixed the frogs with a look loaded with irony. "... I would definitely say yes to that plan. I think it might work, even now. It's a good plan, a bit on the safe side, make no mistake of that. But you know what's the more important thing? We are big damn fucking ninjas." He looked the frogs in the eyes as he said this, pumping the words full of bravado he didn't feel. "The five nations call on us when they want wars won and enemies devastated. We don't play by the rules. We play dirty. We are not the heroes. We are the villains... and we swank at it. We are the ones who get to laugh at the end of the day. We are the ones who get to walk away. And we definitely don't succeed by being meek."

He can see his words working the frogs, see the fire being kindled in their eyes. It was a testament to how far he'd gone since he was sixteen and a Hokage wannabe that he didn't even feel guilty doing it.

"I want you to know the danger, but I also want you to know that I'm not making decisions _**because**_ of that danger. I'd be a terrible ninja if I do that." He grinned ruefully. "You can look at it as a danger that needs to be avoided, but you can also look at it as the biggest opportunity you get to infiltrate the biggest gang this side of the continent, rob them blind, and take over their network like the big damn ninjas we are. What do you say to that, huh?"

The excited grins were more than enough as answers.

He swirled his glass with one hand and then started for real. "Now here's what we're going to do. This paper says we have one night to end this before it can spread, and that's what I intend to happen. This map holds the coordinates and all the passwords we might need. You have done as I told you and memorized Goatee down there?"

They nodded.

"Good. We'll be using that face. One of you will come with me, and one will stay." He looked between them. "Zaki, you stay. Put the children to sleep. This won't take more than a night, so I want you to stay up during that time. The Blackout doesn't have any sensory outputs so you won't know anything until it crashes. I think the chance of it crashing within tonight is pretty much nill, but it pays to be extra careful. How long can you hold a seal of your own?"

"Well... my record is three hours, four top. But this house is big, and the Blackout is bigger. I'm not sure..."

"Ditch all the defence. Leave that to the Blackout. I want you to focus on surveillance. If you don't have to worry about keeping anyone out, you can keep your normal three hours. Cover an area double that of the blackout. Anybody coming in the direction of this house, I want you to memorize them and tag them. Chakra signature, physical appearances, directions, if they carry anything with them, everything. Even if a dog comes in, I want you to able to track it down if the need arises. Aki."

"Yes, boss!"

"You'll be coming with me. We have three hours. Have your poisons ready, and be prepared for anything."

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.

.

He sent Zaki to the children's room, and left quietly. Or rather, he intended to. A surprise waited for him in the welcoming room of Tonaki Ryokan. Right in front of the door were two very indignant looking children.

"I knew it!" Mo announced, very much to Naruto's amusement. Hanzo lunged for his leg and wouldn't let go. "You were right, Mo. She was going to ditch us!"

"This is funny." He mumbled vaguely to no-one, staggering slightly with Hanzo hanging off one leg. Behind him, he heard the sound of a frog skipping frantically and just a second after, Zaki busted into their little standoff. "Boss! The kids are go... oh..."

He looked at Mo curiously. "How'd you know?"

"You have that look on your face. My father would look like that every time he was about to leave us for Kokkyo or some other big cities."

"That's some good observation skill. You've been taking my lessons very well. You'll make a fine kunoichi one day." Ever since the incident on Woodsmen Ville mountain, he could see a new kind of confidence taking roots in Mo. Out of the two, surprisingly, she was the one with better instincts. Or maybe it was as his wife said. It was a woman's intuition kind-of-a-thing. But he hadn't much time to muse. Hanzo, not one to be left behind, was trying to prove he too was studying hard by stealing Naruto's knives. He promptly took them back from Hanzo.

"Well, I hate to do this, children. But I need to go now. I'll back before you even know it. Go to your bed. Tomorrow when you wake up, I'll be right here."

"My father said that too. And then he'd be gone for weeks. Where are you going?"

He paused for one second. If this were his time, this little slip of a girl would have to wait another year to take the Genin test. She'd have to mow lawns and walk people's dogs for another year or two until she could take the Chunin test. And even if she survived and passed that test, another few years grinding the ranks until she was allowed details of an A-class mission from her Hokage. But this little slip of a girl was also the same girl who, hours ago, had given him the kill order on a man she'd known.

"I'm going... to make sure this house belong to us. I'm going to make sure that man who'd beat you and called you a whore never set foot in this house again."

A look passed Mo's face, and broke, and Naruto wondered if he had overdone it. Mo sniffed, once, and Hanzo stilled against his legs. Then a tense moment passed before Aki swooped in and took it over for him.

"Come on, kids. Do as your mama says." She cooed and bustled in her froggy way, somehow doing his job a bazillion time better than him. Hanzo tugged his pants, not letting go, but then Zaki chimed in with his sister. "Come on. I'll sing you a song and put you to sleep. You'll be big, strong ninja in your dream. And tomorrow when you wake up, Naruto is going to be here, and we'll fix you up that sweet pie thing she was talking about. That round brown thing with honey on top."

"Pancake?" The hand fisting his pants loosened up a bit. The boy was hooked.

"Yeah, pancake, with honey on top. No more stale rice-balls and vinegar. All the pancakes and honey you want. How that sounds, huh?"

When Hanzo released him, Mo grabbed Naruto's hand in his place. She stared him in the eye and said.

"This house is ours right? We aren't going anywhere, not for a while, right?"

Doubtful. Even if he secured this place, this didn't look like a good neighbour to be raising two kids. Anywhere on the payroll listing of a criminal organization weren't a good place really. Anywhere on a public listing weren't a good place, period. The ideal would be a small unplottable cottage with a cellar filled with dried rations to last a year siege and everything else prepaid. In cash. No visits. No bills. No mails. Completely off the grid. But all it took was one look into Mo's face, and he got the message loud and clear.

A child could only take so much in such a short time before he or she rolled up and decided to call it a dog's day. Behind the big picture of Uchiha, revenge, and Juubi was the little picture of two kids having just lost their home and family, and really hadn't that much time to stop and lick their wounds and have a rest while they were at it. A really desperately needed rest after that long trek through the nightmarish wood of Woodsmen Ville mountains.

So the answer that came out Naruto's mouth didn't start with a 'no' but a ... "Yeah. This is our house. We ain't going nowhere."

"This is our house." Mo echoed. "We're going to have pancakes for breakfast tomorrow. And I'm going to put white lace drapes on the windows of my room. White drapes with blue snowflakes. And can we grow flowers in the garden? The bushes look awful. Daisies and daffodils, and jasmines, and lilies. And I'm going to plant buttercups right under Hanzo's window because I think he's allergic to buttercups. Can we?"

"Yes, we're going to have pancakes for breakfast, and then we'll grow flowers at noon."

"Okay." She squeezed his hand before letting go. "Okay. I trust you."

.

.

.

The rain poured like an iron veil down the city. Its thick dark drops pounded the asphalt road work. Its roar wound like barbed wire in the air. He left the house quietly, unnoticed under the ravage of the rainstorm. He walked the street for a mere five minutes, and when he was a good distance away from Tonari Ryokan, he headed for the rooftop. Not before long, Naruto was leaping on top the metal skeletal of the abandoned Red Bridge.

The city gleamed like black diamonds in the night. The storm swallowed the groans of the rusty bridge. The river below him writhed like coiled snakes.

_No sleeping under the bridge tonight_. He thought to himself, and to the few vagrants who had been his neighbours during the last two weeks. _No sleeping at all._

"So, where are we headed?" Aki peeked up from under the hood of his rain coat.

"East of Kokkyo. Sewer gate number fifty-two."

Sewer Gate number fifty-two. The word 'sewer' was misleading. One expected small things from a sewer. But this one was huge. Still, it didn't meet Aki's expectation.

"Wow, really? A sewer? They couldn't find a better cliché to do? Come on! Even a cave makes a better villain lair. Or a volcanic mountain. Now that's got flare. Style! Come on! The city sewer?"

"You don't like sewers? What? I thought you guys are amphibians?" He couldn't hide the amusement in his voice. "If you have to fight, then this is your tuff. A volcanic mountain. Now that will give you a bad sunburn. Wouldn't want to ruin that perfectly red complexion now, would we?"

"Well still, the smell. And the neighbours! Can you imagine what's your morning going to be like? Hello, mister duct rat. How's your trash heap doing so far? And how's the rent going? Cheap, I presume."

He took the first step in, humouring Aki with her rant. The sewer gate was a perfect circle, half underwater, half above. And with low guttural grunts, it vomited mocha latte color water into the belly of the river. The smell, despite Aki's protest, wasn't so bad.

"I have to disagree. I think it's a good place. Perfect, even."

"What? Why?"

"Think about it. When you came into this city, what's the first thing that struck you?"

"The samurai? No? Rich? The rivers?"

"Exactly, the rivers." He nodded with approval. "Kokkyo itself was built on top of a nexus of three main rivers running across Fire, Wind, Lightning, and Earth, and about a dozen smaller rivers threading the continent. Rivers from the mountains of Lightning, rivers running across the marshes of Earth, highland lake streams coming from Rain, they all converged here. In other words, it is a natural capital of rivers. It is the single reason that Kokkyo is such a successful port city, because its rivers is a massive and natural industrial transportation line that can reach just about any place that matters on this continent, and with it, pulling all the important trade routes into a single spot. A three-headed water dragon, if you want to speak the old tongue. For a city sitting on top of that dragon, what do you think is the most important thing?"

"Umm..."

"It's the sewer system."

"What? Seriously?"

"Look down to my feet." She looked down. "See how hard a time I'm having just trying to stand on this water. The tide is quick, and it's deep. Now I know I'm not very good with chakra control, but don't forget the seals on my body. I'm not the best, but I'd probably rank very high with my seals on. Right now, I don't even dare stand still. I can't keep up with the speed. I've been moving constantly since I hit the river."

He demonstrated by stopping for a single second. Next they knew, he was already pulled out off the sewer tunnel and into the river again.

"Oh, shit!" Aki squealed when he lost his balance to the vicious pull of the water and one of his feet slid down under the surface. Not missing a beat, Naruto pressed his other foot down. The water tug and pull under his feet like jelly, hardened by his chakra. With a _woosshh_, he bounced on the river surface. His wet foot slipped out with a _pop_ and he was back to walking.

"See what I meant."

"Y...yeah." Aki breathed shakily.

"If it weren't for the sewers, redirecting the force of the rivers, this whole city would have been washed out to the ocean a long time ago. In fact..." He cast a look at the sewer gate, gauging it. "... if we take in the tide power it has to process daily. Several billion metric tons of water every day, then it's nothing short of a hydraulic engineering masterpiece."

He walked a sedate pace upstream and back into the sewer tunnel. When he passed the gate, he pointed at the metal lining. "No rust." Aki gawked at where he pointed, only now noticing something so obvious. "In a place with this much water, and in open air, it hasn't rusted one bit. And it's as old as this city."

"**As** old as this city?"

"Surprising, isn't it?" He smiled. "People usually don't pay attention to things like this. Gutters, sewers, toilets, the dirty things. These things are built to last, cause no one wants to muck around with crap to fix a loose waste pipe. And before they can think about glamorous mega city, they have to first think about glamorous mega city bases. The foundation of a tower almost always outlasts the top. And that's what this thing is. _The very foundation of Kokkyo._"

"I hate to break this to you, but they never taught me architecture back in ninja frog 101. They just taught, you know, the old stuffs. Poison, how to be sneaky. What do you mean the foundation of the city? I see nothing but a lot of tunnels underground. Old tunnels yeah, but still tunnels."

They never taught him either. He picked it up on the run. There was no place better to sabotage a city than its sewers. So many vital spots in one place. Water supply. Emergency system. Disease center, one vial dropped in a good place would bring a city down in burning plagues. The base infrastructure of every super power... in the unlikeliest of place. But how to explain this to creatures living under free open skies like Aki?

"Ever built sand castles?" He decided to start it basic.

"Yeah. Who hasn't?"

"What's the biggest one you ever got?"

"That's not fair. You're like... this big. And I'm like... this small."

"That's not the point. Thing is... you never got them really big right, before they start collapsing."

"Well, they're sand." She went stiff the moment those words rolled out of her mouth. "Oh... oh... I see what you did there. I see where you're going with this thing."

"You got that right." He smiled at her over his shoulders. He could tell her the answer now, but he wanted to see what she got out of what she can see.

She went quiet, immersed in her own thoughts. When she finally spoke, she began by pointing down.

"This land... it's no different than sand, right?"

"Worse, actually. Sand is obvious. People know not to build real castles on sand. But this land. It's not so easy to see the rivers running underground."

"I see... it's quick sand that will swallow this city whole, only that it's dressed up as a land rich with opportunities." She was on the money with that one. River-side cities, despite the economic and strategic advantages they had, also had the annoying tendency to sink. Small city, small sink. Big city, big sink. A city the size of Kokkyo, with a spider web of rivers running in, under, through, and around it... Naruto had little knowledge of the statistics of building a city aside from what was useful to a ninja, but he would still put his money on a massive massive sink that would put this whole city underground within a century or so. Unless... of course, if there were measures against such a thing happening. Measures like this steel and concrete foundation they were walking in.

Five minutes in and the tunnel opened up to a chamber as big as the Konoha stadium where they used to hold the final matches for the Chunin exam. Naruto perched from the mouth of the tunnel he came in, staring through miles of dirty water to search for the abyss bottom of the chamber. It was like trying to search for the end of the skies above the open grassfield of that stadium. A futile effort. The only thing he found were shark-sized fishes swimming in the murky depth. Up above, the walls of the chamber curved into a closed dome, pockmarked with the opening of countless other tunnels. From his vantage point, only a third of the tunnels were spilling an endless supply of waste water into the chamber. The rest had run dry. And from some of those dry tunnels, he could see the light of crackling camp fire. From the tunnel directly opposite him, an old man was sitting on the lip, winding a bamboo fishing pole mechanically. He took one look at Naruto before shooting him the universal facial expression that said, very loud and clear, '_Get ur own dig, punk. This one is mine._'

Naruto merely shrugged, _'whatever you say, gramp'_, before turning back to Aki. "So... what's your opinion now? Bit higher rent, maybe?"

"It's huge!" Aki marvelled at the size of the chamber, magnified against her own diminutive figure. "I didn't think it was this big. It's literally a city underneath another city. Those people, they live here?"

"Seems like it. It's a big city upstair, so downstair's gotta be able to man up on size, or the whole thing goes down." He kicked a pebble and watched it falling down, breaking the water, then swallowed in its dark depth. "I'm guessing that this thing goes way deeper." He slapped the wall beside him. "This concrete frame needs to touch the rock bed down below. Anything less and the subterranean rivers will eat it in a few years. They had to integrate the sewer system into the city foundation to take on the pressure build-up from the three surface rivers."

"Grandpapa Toad! This thing must have taken decades to build."

"Thirteen years, from the first day they started digging to the last day when all the pipe works have been laid, or so I'm told. Before that, Kokkyo was just your typical border city... small, poor, and largely militaristic."

"I heard samurais are fond of their explosives and tech. I bet the police samurais keep them clear off this place." She observed.

"I bet." He laughed a little at her remarks as he made the jump from his side of the chamber to the other side. The length of Konoha stadium and it was no sweat off his brow. Not in this super body anyway. The old fisherman up above dropped his fishing pole in shock. After a few seconds, he ran away, screaming "Samurai! Samurai", and sending down ripples of panic among the sewer dwellers.

"We are ninja, damn it! Ninja!" Aki muttered as he bound away deeper into the sewer system.

The route to the yakuza headquarter was long, as drawn on the map, with an over abundance of crossways and intentional faux pass. It was thirty minutes in that he had Aki wrap him in layers of genjutsu. When he got to a more populated section of the sewers, he was already wearing the face of Goatee and missing a very red, very noticeable frog on his shoulder.

There were people walking along the intersected pipelines now, people carrying bags and boxes and papers, people who looked like they had places to go and things to do. And the prominent tattoos of a rat with one paw raise so proudly displayed on various locations on their bodies.

He walked slowly then, looking for the eye contact of someone who was expecting a report from a certain sellsword samurai. He found none. Still, the map he had had a way more to go. The end of the map led him up a series of stairs until he found himself standing in a spacious hall. Through the windows he can see the street lamps outside. The main door going out was barred and welded shut.

"That's a very big clue." Aki murmured in his ears.

There were people in the hall. The usual blue collar thugs and white collar conmen. There were cages to one side of the hall, and inside the cages were sickly looking women of various heritages wearing very little on their bodies. He can see the drip veins going into their hands and it made him sick to the stomach.

"Is... is this how humans treat their own?" Aki hissed in his ears. _No we don't. This_ _is a slave op_. He ran into these things in third world countries often enough to know how they operated. By the time of his era, human products had gone up in prices enough to for the usual brick-and-mortar women dealers to abandon their usual buy-and-sell model and opt for the more desperate kidnap-and-drug one. They took girls from small and poor villages who can't afford the going rates of ninjas, or single woman travellers no one would notice had disappeared somewhere on the roads, then drugged them to prevent runaways. The rest was profit. To see the same ugly things here, a hundred years in the past, was waking up some of his more extreme sides.

Naruto wanted to tell Aki this, but there were eyes on him now and he can't move his mouth without getting noticed.

A nondescript thirty-something man was ambling up his side, sandwiched by a pair of brawns on on both side. The regional king of the hill underling, obviously. "Taka" He greeted Naruto with a shake of his chin.

Naruto kept his eyes peeled on the women in the cages. He knew there was a rite at this point that he should perform. The usual 'my cock is bigger than yours so kneel down before I'm forced to shove it down your throat' that was the greeting protocol among thugs of this calibre, but he wasn't feeling like his usual self... not when he was seeing some redheaded green-eyed women in the cages.

"I need to see the boss." He replied succinctly.

"What for?" Kingofthehill eyed him suspiciously.

"Did the boss pay you to ask questions? I need my bills paid." Looking at these women wasn't doing him any favours. He directed his eyes on the naked blade on one of the thugs, hoping to keep his cool professionalism.

"You already got paid. Cash down at the beginning of the month. We ain't no charity cause for washed-up samurais. Don't try to fleece us."

"I need..." His tactics were working against him. He saw a girl, couldn't be older than ten, in the reflection of the blade. Before he knew it, he was looking at her hooded hopeless eyes. "Aww... fuck..." He muttered. "I know I'm some kind of shit but even I can't do this. I'm not your kind of shit." He turned back to the stupefied thugs. "Just lie down and die quietly. I guarantee it's the less painful way to go."

He couldn't hide the killing intent rising up from his whole being.

"Shit! Shit! Shut the door!" Kingofthehill squealed like a baby and fell back. The brawns at his sides advanced on Naruto. One of them lunged a meaty fist at his face. Without missing a beat, Naruto brought up his right hand. His hand made contact with the thug's arm, then went through it with little cracks of things breaking. Thug A screamed. His left was positioned in front of the thug's fist. His right hand kept going up until the entire arm was separated from the thug. He gripped the now severed arm with his left and brought it through Thug B's head like an arm-shaped spear. It made a terrible spear but he heard the crack that throat columns made when they separated into two and knew it had done its job.

The women screamed. He spared them a glance. Good, at least they still had the strength to scream.

The rest of the thugs had gathered to the other side of the room after seeing him drop two of their burliest without breaking a sweat. They were bringing out the ranged goodies under Kingofthehill's command.

"Aki, barrier."

"Mine is pretty weak, you know. I can't hold it for more than five minutes."

"Not for me." He gestured with his head. "For them."

"Wha...?" She blinked once, then comprehension lighted her eyes. A shimmering barrier went up around the cages and the women inside, just in time to fend off the first barrage of arrows and throwing knives.

"Five minutes, huh." He murmured as he neatly sidestepped a flying axe. "Let's make it two."

He cleared the first half of the thugs in a dizzying storm of severed heads, arms, and legs without firing up his chakra even once. The capabilities of this body so far outstripped his old one that the use of chakra seemed a waste. When he got to the second half, he considered flaring up the Rasengan... just for style... he was performing for the ladies after all... but then they were already dropping too fast for him to backpedal, and so he thought to himself 'oh, what the hell' and finished the last one of them.

"Two... two minutes, exactly." Aki said breathily.

Naruto stared at the door in front of him. Very basic protection, but it must have a cost an arm, a leg, and a spleen in this day and age. A seal requiring the correct handprint to open. He went back to the pile of bodies and started digging until he found Kingofthehill, then he dragged him in front of the door and put his hand on the seal. A loud blaring sound filled the room and the door glowed red.

"What's wrong?" Asked Aki.

"It needs a positive life sign to open up. Not bad." For a while in Hi no Kuni, there was a fad among crime lords to have this type of cookie-cutter security. Then their doormen started disappearing and their body parts, usually hands or eyeballs, turned up sometimes later after the security was busted, and they started wising up. Not that it did them much good. There were too many ways to bypass something as inane as a life signal detector.

"Will that be a problem?" said Aki. Naruto replied by positioning a hand on the back of Kingofthehill's limp body, then pushing through until his hand was holding a very still heart. He flared his chakra once, very gently. This was a crude technique desperate medic nin sometimes used in the field to get some poor bugger up and running for a little while more until real medical attention arrived. He'd done it a little late if he had wanted to save this one. But it was okay. He wasn't out to save. He was out to use. The poor heart, agitated by the current running through it, started beating a slow tempo, pumping blood through the still warm corpse once more.

The door pinged a sweet pine-forest green and opened up.

"Forget I said anything."

He hesitated for a second before the now opened door. He couldn't see anyone, nor detect any further security measures inside. The hall where he stood breathed a quiet background music of stifled cries and sighs. He turned back to the women. They were a sorry sight... but still beautiful to his eyes.

Especially the redheaded ones. He saw too much familiarity in them for it not to be so. A few of the women were looking at him under their lowered eyelashes. He knew what was going through their heads, but he wasn't that type, no matter how far he thought he'd sunk.

"Aki, drop the genjutsu." The moment his female appearance was revealed, he heard a lot of gasps and a fair number of shoulders drooping in relief.

There was a girl in the middle who looked like she had only spent a few days here. He approached her slowly, utilising all the points on his female body to send a subconscious message of 'I'm perfectly harmless. Don't run away screaming now' to her. Finally he was in front of her cage. He kneeled down on one leg. She didn't shy away from him, and this close, he can see that they hadn't got the drug veins into her yet.

"How're you doing?"

She had no answer for him, but her eyes flickered past him. He followed her gaze to the trap door that connected this... whatever it was... to the sewer maze below.

"Don't worry about that. I don't think they come up here without somebody calling on them. Now, can you walk?" The girl nodded. He smiled at her encouragingly before laying a hand on the bars of her cage. With a twist of his hand, half of the iron cage came away in twists of scrap metal. The girl flinched but didn't scoot away.

"What's your name?"

"Yu... Yuka..."

"Yuka. That's a beautiful name." She couldn't help a shy smile creeping across her face. Days in a place like this could make a girl smile when a stranger complimented her name. A few more days and perhaps she wouldn't have smile, she would have shied away in fear, but those days hadn't come yet and now the girl named Yuka was hungry for the gentle way this strange lady was looking at her and speaking to her, as if she still had some worth to her other than being female and young enough to fuck.

"Yuka, can I trust you? Can you help me with something?" She nodded vigorously.

"In there..." The stranger pointed at the pile of bodies. Yuka had no pity for these thugs. They had taken her from her house, from her parents and siblings in the middle of the night and since then it had only been hurt for her, hurt and terror and shame. She had seen them do worse things to others than this stranger did to them. The stranger was too quick. She should have lingered, should have let them feel a bit more pain. But that was neither here nor there, and now all Yuka wanted to do was hang on the words from this stranger's mouth. "... are the keys to the rest of the cages. I'm not sure which one have it. Can you find it for me and open the rest of the cages?"

Yuka nodded again before getting up slowly. The stranger held her gently. "One more thing." The stranger eyed her. "I'm going to go in there." She gestured towards the open door where these kidnappers sometimes took the most beautiful girls through. Young, beautiful, and virgin girls from far-off villages. It was a bad place. None of the girls that went through remained the same. "When I come out, none of the guys who ran this place will be alive. It might get dangerous so don't follow me. Release the other girls, wait for awhile and if you don't hear anything blowing up, then go find some water. Don't try to eat. I don't think your stomach can handle it right now." The stranger eyed the pile of human bodies. "Can I count on you to do what I say, Yuka?"

Yuka nodded so hard her head might have fallen off her skinny neck.

"Good girl." She couldn't help but lean in to the hand on her head. Unlike the others, she had only been here for a short while. She could still remember love... or the ghost of it. "Take care of the other for me, alright?"

When the stranger got up and was about to leave, Yuka did the boldest thing she had ever done since being carted off from her village. She gripped the stranger hand. She made sure she had her full attention before trying something she had never done before. "Make..." She licked her lips. The dialect they used here in this big city was very different from what they used in her home, and her mouth handled it poorly. Still, she tried. "... make them hurt..." She could see the look in the stranger's eyes. This was someone who understood 'hurt' in ways Yuka would never be able to, and that made Yuka very _very_ happy. "... make them hurt... real bad... alright?"

* * *

End chapter 7

* * *

1.

"**Sythe, are you fine? Are you sick again? Are you still alive?"**

Yes, I was sick. Yes, I'm still alive (yay). No, I'm not dead and I don't intend to kick the bucket anytime soon if I can help it. My health is bad... but not that bad (I hope). I have received, I think, about twenty or so PM asking me questions along these lines for the last five months.

So, why the super long hiatus?

I want to eat my shoes at this. It seems like every time I make a deadline promise, something conspires to make me break it. So I guess I should just learn the lesson and not make promise from now on. Still, I owe my readers their explanation.

Yes, I was sick, but that isn't the main reason. The main reason why I haven't writing is... I have been offered a book deal.

I showed this story and a part of the draft to an agent friend of mine and through him a publisher was interested in the story. They didn't like the fact that it started out as a fanfiction but by the time they were through with the draft, they figured that I have built too much original content and world of my own that the next step of transforming it into a true original story of its own right would not be a large step at all. This kind of Eastern fantasy story is rare and often sought after in the literary market where I live.

Yes, they want me to throw off the boundary of fanfic and rewrite this story into an original story in my language (which is not English). Till this moment, I am still very dubious about this. I do not know if my health permits a second job like this. And... the professional publishing industry has its own limitations. If someone on ffnet doesn't like how I write, the worst I'm going to get is an angry review. If someone in real life doesn't like what I write, that means loss of profit and literary brand name and I have had some bitter experience working as a fantasy writer in a culture where writing isn't exactly what you do if you want to get rich. Constrained by this, I would not be as free to imagine and create as I would in the fanfiction world. And the rapport I have with my readers would not be as strong as what I have here on ffnet.

Still, I do not deny that me heart feels the call of a shit-load of money on my thin wallet. Tis Femina is a long story (in which the 7-8 chapters I have posted is merely setting the field for the true story to take place) that would support me financially for a long time and the number they are offering is huge indeed.

Anyway, that is to say... I haven't in any way made my decisions yet. I am writing much more now than ever, trying to test out what I can make without the crutches and constraint of the Naruto world. If I do say yes, and can produce a good original draft, I will probably have to discontinue Tis Femina. But I'm not sure of anything at this point. If you ask questions, chances are that I won't be able to answer you. I might say yes. I might say no (I do have a well-paying day job which I enjoy). And even if I say yes, Tis Femina and the thing I can give birth to can be two very different things.

If I say yes, it can be a very painful thing for you the readers and for me too. I have such big plans for Tis Femina, such epic adventure, treacherous political battles, great wars fought, and the romance... the romance... is the one aspect I treasure in this story. I am a romantic person by heart (even though sometimes it doesn't feel like it) and all the stories I write has some measure of romance in it even though it might not be a point of the stories.

So, what I am going to do now is just to continue writing. I have spent a long time in indecision and I feel like I won't be getting anywhere if I just stay on my ass and do nothing, so... I'll just write. Fanfiction. Original. Whatever strikes my fancy and see what I can create. This will be the last chapter where anything is finite and known. I don't when the next chapter will come out... if it comes out. I'll just keep writing until the final decision come to me.

(In fact, I already have a new fic up. It's a Dragon Age 2 / Lord of the Rings crossover.)

2. Here is one of the big questions I know a lot of you are always asking. **What's going on between Hashirama and Naruto? Is their relationship a romantic one or not? **Since this will be the last chapter I'm sure that I will post, I decided that I owe my readers some straight answers.

The short answer to this question is Yes. Their relationship does have romantic underlining... at least from Hashirama's side. Naruto, on the other hand, has a long way to go until h/she is in shape to actually love someone other than Sakura.

But Sythe, didn't you say back in chapter 7 that you didn't write this story just to pair Naruto up with somebody?

Well, I lied. Okay, not really. Don't ready your rotten tomatoes. Just listen to me, okay.

a/ While it is true that I have always written Tis Femina (since the first draft actually) with the Hashirama/Naruto romance in mind, the romance is **part** of the story. It is not the whole **parcel**. Just as I did not want people coming in here with the expectations of a run-of-the-mill genderbender fic, I did not want readers coming in expecting to read a romance story only. A primarily romance reader will not be able to endure the brutal the world that is Tis Femina (since I'm of the mind that you can only truly appreciate beauty when you find it in the depths of hell).

While every subtext, sexual tension, and undertone between Hashirama and Naruto were written with every intention to tease and titillate the readers (and I think I quite succeeded at that)... so were all the psychological nuances.

I can wax lyrical about how I want to explore the psychological ramification of a gender-flip (and I do) but the crux of a gender dilemma is a sexual one. It has always been and it always will be about sex. I can ramp up the mind-screw psycho, but gender psychology is nothing without the effects of sociology.

If you see a beautiful woman, wouldn't you want to love her? Wouldn't you want to touch her? Even though in her head she thinks she's a man. Naruto may think he's a man for now but other people see him as a woman and no amount of denial will change this. A beautiful woman of such vivid temperament. It is inevitable that someone will feel the hanker of Cupid sooner or later. Hashirama is not the only one to fall hard and fast.

So, from the beginning, I knew that if I were to write a truly realistic gender-bender, I will have to include adult romantic aspects (and I'm very glad for it. Make no mistake. I like romance. The good ones, not the corny ones.) Yet on the other hand, I was worried because I know how sometimes a romance can eclipse the story itself, especially if the readers clamour for it. So... I wrote the interactions between Hashirama and Naruto rife with subterranean tensions and sexual cues. I teased my readers because I want them to, subconsciously, know that the sex and the romance is there. An unspoken, unwritten promise of sort. Then I punished them with horror and mind-screw to burry and disguise the romance beneath. I shamed them into thinking how dare they ask for silly freaky hanky-panky in a serious fic when I have every intention of writing naughty freaky hanky-panky since the beginning because I don't want them to only think about the freaky hanky-panky alone (tongue twister, galore!).

I have a suspicion that a lot of my readers may be closet masochists.

I deceived you all (including my betas), I confess, but I only did it so that you would enjoy the story more. (You may now ready your tomatoes. I will endure them with dignity)

b/ I hate having to categorize a relationship between characters with a single word. It is a poor testament to a writer's skill at characterization, in my opinion, if the readers can safely put a relationship in the trappings of a single word like 'romantic' or 'non-romantic'.

Is the relationship romantic? Yes. Is that all it is? No.

The character of Hashirama in this fic is all about deception. The one thing that I (and Naruto) know from the beginning that many readers don't is that he's a big fat liar. I realized that if I were to write him true to his character, then he has to, somehow, deceive the readers themselves. I think I succeeded at this since I'm getting the feeling that while the readers may know Hashirama as a cunning, ruthless, and charismatic reader, a lot of them still, in some way, views him as a loveable boy-next-door type (and they view him with no small amount of fondness).

Here is one truth about Hashirama that you don't know. He is no virgin in the fields of love and seduction, figuratively and literally even though at the start of the story, he's only about seventeen.

He knows his allure to women is the gentle, harmless homeboy image he creates, and he uses this _very_ well. He has been with many women, and he has killed just as many using this guise. That may sound foul to your ears, but Hashirama is, by nurture, a practicalist and survivalist. He's not going to deny an advantage that will let him live another day in a world that fears and envies his power since birth.

Here is one more morsel of truth that I wouldn't have revealed this soon if I were still writing this story to the end. Before chapter 3, the only thing Hashirama feels for Naruto is **hate**. He saved Naruto with every intention to hurt. All the readers I have spoken with suffer under the illusion that just because someone saves you, that person must have good intentions towards you.

I hate to break it to you so early in the game, but the truth of the matter is far more complex than that.

It is only sometimes into chapter 3 that his feeling started to change. The inevitable discovery that he has fallen hard for a woman who he knows almost nothing about is a horrific and painful one for him, and very nearly drives him to insanity (it did/does drive him into obsession though). The future relationship that he will share with Naruto is one where pain and pleasure intersects, where torture (emotional and physical) is the fact of everyday life and sometimes replaces sex, and there's almost no distinguishing love and hate.

Now that you know this, my dear readers, do you still want to categorize their relationship under either 'romantic' or 'non-romantic'?

3. This is to my dear betas, Michelle and Kevin. I have dealt you an unfair hand. I ran away when I was presented with to write or not to write dilemma and left you guys in the dark without so much as a by-your-leave. I didn't have the guts to write you guys a straight explanation and face your disappointment despite the fact that you have helped me so much in writing this story without asking for anything in return. Michelle, I love the support you've always given me. Kevin, I still have your footprint on the seat of my pants. For all the effort I put in, the fact is I'm a complete troll to my betas. I can't help it, I think. Still, I want to say I'm sorry and you two can write me hatemails for the rest of my life and I will still love you.

Sythe (hoping against hope to meet you in the near future)


	9. Chapter 8: The Game Changer

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto.

Beta: Michelle T.

Part II: Uchiha

II. Kiiroi Kami

**Chapter 8:**** The Game Changer**

* * *

Naruto let his gaze take in the man reclining on the triple king size bed in the middle of the room. Heavy-set, average height, a receding hairline. There was some muscle on top of the fat but they looked like they were quickly losing their battle with his beer paunch. Black hair, black eyes, typical Hi no Kuni type. There was nothing extraordinary about this man save for the very prominent tattoo of a rat sprawling across his chest that put a wince to Naruto's face. There was more ink than skin on that hairy chest, and as he studied the rat—his medic-nin instincts kicked in—all he could think about was all the germs on the tattoo needles. That couldn't have been very hygienic.

The man was normal—the average rung of the criminal genus. In his line of work, Naruto had seen a lot of crime bosses and he wasn't impressed with what he was seeing. In fact, he was having a hard time believing he really was dealing with the king of the pack here.

Big Rat, his mind swiftly dubbed, leaned forward, upper chest on lower beer paunch. His eyes roamed all over Naruto's female body. Clucking noises left his puckered mouth.

"Aren't you a sweet thing?" Big Rat leered.

"Yeah, I'm real sweet. I'm all candies, sugar, and lollipops. The sweetest thing you'll ever have." Naruto replied nonchalantly, strutting across the length of the cavernous hall that was Big Rat's personal suite. He debated hiding his bloody hands, but the weight and intensity of Big Rat's gaze on his chest told him that he shouldn't bother.

Big Rat clucked again, sounding like he had a particularly chatty chicken somewhere down his throat. "I wonder where they got you from. Not a noble house, not with that tongue. But I can't think of any backwater village that can produce anything like you. Tell me, girl. Where did you get all... this..." He gestured at Naruto's whole body. "... from?"

"I got it from my mama," Naruto reiterated—a cheesy line he'd read from one of Jiraiya's books. He took the liberty to omit the salacious sighs and winks. He didn't think Big Rat could take that lying down, not with the way his whole body was quickly reddening like an overheated kettle.

"Did you now?" Big Rat drawled. But Naruto was only paying him half his attention. The other half was blazing over the room. Big, dark, opulent. Somebody here read _Dastardly Villain Chic_ while doing interior decorating. Thick white fur covered the laminated floor. A few ornamental swords displayed on a set of cases. No security measures aside from the ones he had already taken care of on the way here. Probably didn't read enough _Security Weekly_.

He looked Big Rat in the eye, smiled. His smile did exactly what it was intended for: mentally distract and disarm. While Big Rat swerved woozily after at him, the only thought that ran through Naruto's head was: what was he going to do with this poor bastard?

The very speed with which he'd reeled and spooled Big Rat in told much of the fact that this was still not the top rung of whatever criminal organization he'd stumbled into. Still, that didn't change that Big Rat apparently owned the biggest and most protected room in the entire compound. Bling-bling and all that. The top-of-the-line (for this time period) seal-based communication station built into the right wall of the chamber also helped. So were the three dead samurai-for-hire squads outside.

So here he was, right at the mouth of the million ryo question. What to do?

Keep him alive and put him through a squeezer and squeeze to his heart's content until Big Rat squealed out all the dirt from his Rat Outfit? That was tempting, except for the fact Naruto just didn't have the time, nor incentive to deal with that. Something as big as the Rat Syndicate, as the locals called it, must have something of a private army at its beck and call. And while holding the Rat's Head hostage was something he could do, and do quite easily too, one might add, lengthening the process could be... messy. Especially when he had two kids in lock-down in a Rat's holdout on the outskirt of town. Any ranked subordinate with two brain cells to rub together would be able to trace him to his weak spot—to the two civvie kids and one little frog with maybe some fang to him—in a pretty much defenseless rundown inn. What followed, one could always guess. Just pick the worst options and roll. Nothing easier than that.

So... maybe no? But he kept the idea around for further consideration.

Now the other one, simply kill the bastard and take over. He could do it. It was fast and it was easy. He had done it before. Nothing made for better war cannon fodders than a coupla' Yakuza armies hellbent in the wrong direction. That he had done too. In drawn-out wars of attrition, human resource was valuable and should be used sparingly to great efficiency... **his** human resource. Other people's swords-and-testosterone-on-two-legs were fair game, as far as Naruto was concerned. In war, no adults were innocent. Sometimes, not even children.

But even that route had problems of its own. First of all, Big Rat was obviously a mouthpiece—a little stuffed doll whose sole purpose was to scare aways the crows and the critters and to dance to the tune of whoever was funneling money and power through the Rat's front. Cutting the doll's wire would attract the attention of whoever was on the other side, no question about it. Cutting while he knew so little about it could be... problematic.

Then something happened that decided it for him. Big Rat shifted forward, hands held out making a grab for him and his female parts. The bed bounced and heaved under Big Rat's massive weight, and as it made a curve up, Naruto saw the second person on the bed, previously hidden behind Big Rat's girth. The person was small, tiny. Not an adult—a child, so young he wasn't sure if it were a boy or a girl. The contour of the body was still in an infantile stage untouched by hormones. The child was asleep... or out cold, naked, saved for a pair of stained underwear. The same stain littered the blankets and the mattress. _There have been some activities here_, they said,_ the adult kind._

The breath went out of Naruto like _woooossshh_, like somebody just swung a hammer to his stomach. He went still, made a clucking sound.

"That bastard!" Aki hissed into his ears.

Before she finished voicing her thoughts, he made eye contact with Big Rat. "Wow, you just really have to be a cliche' kinda bad guy, don't you?" He said. Big Rat blinked, momentarily displaced. Sexual gratification objects did not have voice—at least, ones that didn't titillate. By saying that, Naruto had put a hit on the high-class sex object veneer he was wearing. Now from that hit, the fractures spidered out.

Oh well... too bad.

"You know... I knew this one guy. Criminal. Runs a slave ring out of a warehouse and a circus. His specialty is organ harvesting, the forced kind. Baddest of the bunch. He had _badass motherfucker_ tattooed to his forehead. My opinion is, that's pretty redundant. The bloke didn't need no announcement for others to know what he was. He didn't care for no one. He'd do anything, sell anything. He took a lot from my village, so I went after him. Tit for tat, ya know. Guy was slick as a fox. Took me three years to track him down." He said as he strutted over to a nonplussed Big Rat. He knew what was going on in the brain behind those beady eyes: the danger signal trying to override the urge to procreate.

"I caught him on the border into a war zone. He was going to sneak out and lie low until I went over him. Change his name, change his face, and start over. I didn't have no jurisdiction and no people over that border so if he'd done it would have taken me at least another three years. Thing is, he didn't. Failed. Never got beyond that border. I snatched him up like a frog in a jar. He didn't have nowhere else to run when I came knocking. You know why he failed?"

"Wutt?" Big Rat offered stiltedly. There was now an air to the room, the suffocating pressure of barely leashed chakra. There was a thread of Juubi yoki in it, just a bit. If this was up above, Naruto would have beat it out of there hard and fast or risk being tailed by a team of Samurai chakra sensors, but he'd seen the cloaking seal on the door of the compound as he came in. It was probably meant to hide the illegal activities going on here. It was just luck that it would hide him too.

"He killed his second-in-command, the one that was supposed to take him over. Put a knife to that guy's eye socket and watched him bleed out from his head. You know what the second-in-command did to deserve that? Guy took on a freelance contract. He sold a lil' boy to a noblewoman who wanted a pet. How was I supposed to know Badass Motherfucker had one cardinal rule he ain't never told anyone? You know what that rule was?"

He was standing directly before Big Rat now, within arm length. But the head of the Rat Syndicate was stiff and still as a stone, frozen over in shock—and fear. A sudden, overwhelming, animal kind of fear.

"No..." Said Naruto, his voice coming out quiet and heavy. "... children."

Several things happened at once, in the split of a second. He moved. Big Rat jerked back. The bed snapped with a crack at the sudden disappearance of three hundred pounds of meat and fat.

The child on the bed moved its hand a little, eye lids rippling with the movement of REM sleep. Naruto tilted his head a little for a better look in. Then...

"Aki."

"Got it, boss." The frog leaped off him and on the bed. In the next second, she had a mild paralysis seal going on, enveloping the child, keeping it from waking up.

That done, Naruto turned back to the struggling crime boss hanging off his hand. Big Rat was a lot of man. It showed, because the muscle in his demon-built body strained a little. But he held on with no problem. His hand around Big Rat's neck was so deep in fat and muscle it looked like it was buried inside.

"Now, where were we?" He said to the hopelessly gurgling crime boss. Big Rat's feet were a foot from the ground, kicking wildly. His hands clawed into Naruto's arm to no avail. He made a spitting sound, then a hissing sound. His face turned red, then purple, glistening with sweat.

"Ah, Badass Motherfucker. Anyway..." Naruto continued. "... turned out he was an orphan kid who got kicked around a lot when he was smaller than anyone else he knew. Guy got a chip he ain't never showed to anyone. For his sake, I made it quick. But you..."

He came in closer, locked eyes with Big Rat. He wanted to watch this one die.

"... I think you're starting to realize now. You are not getting out of this one. No one is coming, and I'm not stopping. What we are going to do, is wait, babe. And while we do it, I'm going to tell you a secret."

Big Rat's body sputtered, spasmed. He let go of his bladder. Naruto sidestepped it.

"I used to tell my wife I really don't like killing. I didn't lie to her, mind. I really don't like killing. But once in a while, there comes a guy like you, the real special type. I know them right away, 'cause they have this effect on me."

He came in even closer, his mouth was right beside Big Rat's ears. His next words came out as a whisper. "They make me fucking love it."

There was second after it, that something like near, complete silence happened, when the body weakened and the voice failed. Then Big Rat's carotid artery busted open, jetting blood from the floor to the ceiling. Naruto admired the graceful arc it made.

"Say cheese, babe," he said to Big Rat, and felt with his hand the micro vibrations of neck muscles that indicated that the crime boss really was trying to say cheese. A last bid for mercy with obedience.

Then it ended.

Naruto released his hand. Three hundred pounds of meat fell down and collided with the floor. He walked around the body, coming to check the child.

"How is it?" He asked.

"Good." Replied Aki. "She's sleeping. Probably won't wake for another six hours. Her wounds are superficial." Then the frog jerked her head at the body on the floor. "That's it? That quick? That bastard deserved a little more than that."

He raised an eyebrow with the frog, then with a flick of his wrist, took out one of Goatee's short knives. He poked the corpse with it a few times.

"Stab, stab, stabbity, stab. Happy?"

"No frigging way! Watch me!" said Aki, right before she frog-hopped from the bed to the corpse, then proceeded to stamp on it with her little feet.

"Take this, bastard!" She shrieked as she bounced on and off. A yellow, viscous fluid leaked from her bright red skin. The moment the fluid came into contact with the body, the flesh started sizzling, then dissolving.

Naruto made not a move to stop her. Instead, he headed for Big Rat's personal com station by the wall. "Have fun!" He said over his shoulder. "Leave the head for me."

"Got it, boss."

The comm station. Now, that was some work. He whistled low as he studied it. Talk about using a butcher knife for sushi cuts. In his time, on-field communication utilized Yamanaka mind-link techniques and a mix of electronic walkie-talkies connected to a central channel, something like what they used back in his genin days, only a lot sturdier and with longer range. This time period had neither of those, so they made do by slapping and taping together a bunch of seals and old-style analog transponders. The result was something that straddled the line between ingenious and insane, with not the least bit grace to it. It was an overcomplicated yarn ball of seals and wires, but damn if it didn't do the job.

He poked around it. In five minutes, he found his way in. What he found... was interesting. There was a fancy clock on the wall, made of wood, carved, and plated with what looked like gold. He checked it. It read:

11:23.

He still had time. He turned back. On the floor, Big Rat had been reduced to a piss-color puddle. His head was the only thing still in tact. The neck cut had been cauterized. Aki stood to the side, huffing in exertion.

"How was it?"

"Good. Better than good!"

"Yeah? Well, get yourself in gear. We've got work to do." He said, picked up the head, and walked out the door.

When he got back to the hall with the entrance down into the underground sewer system, he could see that little Yuka, that girl he'd chosen from among the captured women, had done a far better job than he expected.

They huddled together in a corner, checking each other's wounds. Some were sobbing. Some were consoling the sobbing ones. They startled when he came near, but at least they didn't run. Yuka came out from among them. She eyed Big Rat's head on his belt, then she said.

"Thank you." She couldn't sound more grateful had she tried. Her voice had cleared up a little since last he spoke to her. A woman cried out from behind her.

"What are you going to do to us?"

"That depends. What do you want me to do you?" He said, nonchalantly. There was something of a stunned silence following his honest answer. Perhaps they hadn't expected to have a choice in the matter. He could understand that. He studied the pitiful-looking group of women. He remembered there were more of them.

"Did some of you ran away?"

"Yes." Yuka answered. "Several girls who came in this week."

"That's a foolish thing to do." The same woman who pelted the question at him said. "They'd soon find themselves in the same place, just with different handlers... or worse. This is not a land where a lone woman can walk around without a care. Those poor, misguided fools!"

Ah... so there was the crux of the problem. If he had to guess, he'd say they were in the bad part of town right now. Not the most ideal place for a group of previously women slaves, many of them without any idea of how the big cities functioned. This group right in front of him had the smarts to know they couldn't leave yet, not when many were still hooked up to the drugs used to to nail them here, not until they knew they could walk out alive and not become damaged goods in a turf war.

"Who of you still have a home to return to?" He asked. "Be honest. I'm only trying to help."

Some hands raised timidly. About a third of the group. The other two-thirds all spotted grim looks to their faces. Tough question, but it must be asked.

"I'll be clear with you. I'm taking over this thing." he made a circling gesture, pointing at everything, the room, outside. "Coup d'etat style. Some of you may think it's suicidal, but you've seen what I can do, what I did." The women looked at the pile of body parts that used to be thugs and guards by the inner door, then they looked at the head dangling from his belt. Some of them recognized the head. Big Rat must have loved sampling his goods before selling them to the customers.

"Once I'm done..." He carried on, not even bothering with the possibility that he might fail, because there was simply no such possibility. "... I will return those of you who still have a home to your home. I will provide you with money, food, and protection until you reach the door of your house. For those of you who no longer have a place to return to, the choice is yours. Strike out and make a life for yourselves here in Kokkyo, or go somewhere else. Or... you can stay here, with me. I will promise you this. I protect all those who follow me."

His words sent ripples into the group. Some of the women started whispering furiously to each others. After a while, question-woman pitched another one.

"What's the catch?" There was not a hint of hostility in her words. She'd been here for some time. She knew how it went. This was the best they were going to get. Might as well take advantage of it while it lasted.

"You help me. Now." Naruto said succinctly. "I need to set up something of a honey trap. Don't worry about it. I'm not going to parade you around like they did. I'm the honey... and the trap. You just help me set up stuffs since I'm a bit low on time."

There was some more buzzing in the group, then question woman walked out, stood next to little Yuka. She looked around late 30s, an ill catch that never got nowhere in the human goods commercial traffic, so here she stayed. She already had some strands of white on a head full of glossy black. Question-woman exchanged a look with Yuka. Then she looked back at him.

"Deal." She said.

He smiled, not for him, for their sakes. "Well, lets get started then." He pointed to the pile of bleeding body parts. "Mop those boys up and spruce this place up a bit. At least make it look like I never went through. Bring your ills inside. Use the spare rooms. And get some servant clothes on some of you. Volunteers only."

His smile came into a full grin. His face stretched, his whiskers along with it.

"We've got a yakuza gang to take over."

* * *

The underground landscape of Kokkyo was a relatively simple one. Not the literal underground landscape, more social underground kind of thing. There were three top gangs that had the run of the city and surrounding area: Nezumi the Rat, Tachibana Tea-house Club, and the Golden Bough Society. Of all three, Nezumi had the loudest bark and the nastiest bite. While the other two concentrated on either 'finer' or 'smaller' disciplines of criminality like information brokerage, espionage, discreet bribery, sabotage, piracy, prostitution and pimping, the golden triumvirate of thievery, burglary and robbery, etc... , Nezumi came in with its muscles in full showcase.

Drugs, human trafficking, illegal gambling, sports of the bloody kind, mercenary armies for hire—those were Nezumi's range of services. The Rat prided itself as something of a merchant. It was even honest sometimes. It bought things. It sold things. Same old, same old—whether the things it bought and sold were packets of white powder, a few human goods, or half a dozen squads of samurai - baker's dozen -, it was still the same. Commercial services, reinterpreted to suit the local taste. And while it was true that it stood along with Tachibana Tea-house Club and the Golden Bough Society as the top dogs of underground Kokkyo, it was pretty much an open secret that if it wanted to, it could bite the other two to shreds. So far, it had not wanted to. The Tachibana Tea-houses complimented the holes in Nezumi's operation, the brain, the information, things that needed done discreetly. Their partnership was a mutually beneficial one. The Golden Bough, on the other hand, provided foot works that Nezumi didn't bother itself with. The grunts, the one who got to shake the trees of those who didn't pay up, and also the one to take the blame on police raids. Their partnership had more shades of master and blood hound than a real equal exchange of services. Still, it had worked so far, and both had come away fat from it.

In terms of organization, Nezumi only had one boss—the Patriarch, the Oyabun of all other Kobun, the Father. Below him were four subordinate So-Hunbucho—his generals, his arms and shields and swords, the so-called Nezumi 'uncles' of the organization.

Each of these So-Hunbucho governed over a particular arm of Nezumi operation: the drug cartel arm, the slave trade arm, the sport and gambling arm, which, as a rule, also included on-the-house loan-sharking, and the mercenary arm... a.k.a Nezumi's own private army.

While the Oyabun himself did not directly manage any specific part of Nezumi, his command was unquestioned, and his dwelling the heart of Nezumi operation. Contact between Oyabun and So-Hunbucho were kept via an exclusive seal-based com ring, the head of which was built into the Oyabun's personal abode.

At exactly 12:30 AM of that day, a signal was transmitted from the central station of this com ring, segregated into four and arrived in four different transponder sets held by the four So-Hunbucho.

The message said only one word. One order.

* * *

Kodama watched his Kobun muscle sacks of white powder off the quarantined neighborhood as he scribbled numbers into his book. Six sacks from Heiha ward, left over. He put six hundred thousand ryo in the account receivable column, making a note there to extract the sum out of the prefect of Heiha and a late-payment interest rate of two percent per day, extractable by the sale of children and unwanted wives if need be. One of the Kobun tripped over a corpse laying by the turn of the neighborhood. The sack on his shoulder swerved haphazardly.

"Watch it!" He shouted, pen poised in the expense column. He'd rather not lose one of those, but in the event that he did lose one of those, he had solutions, starting with the financial liquidation of said clumsy Kobun.

Kodama was not in a good mood. This was easily recognizable to his Kobuns by the amount of time his book of accounts stayed in his hand. For the last week or so, the book stayed with Kodama even when he visited the latrine... or the brothel-house, which to him, was about the same. Kodama's bad mood originated from a hole in the asset column, under ready-to-ship products. One of the Woodsmen Villages had gone quiet. Accordingly, production had taken a ten percent nose dive, and subsequently, sales had plummeted by twice that number. They were running low on both reserves and revenue, both of which Kodama was sensitive about.

To remedy this situation, Kodama had been forced to requisition 'second-hand goods' from the quarantined zone of Kokkyo, from wards that never used up their supplies due to too many deaths. And that made him even angrier. A breeze passed by, bringing with it the smell of decomposing corpses. Kodama adjusted his hazard breather mask. His suppliers had said the product of this season might have some unintended side effects. Side effects were one helluva way to put it. A tenth of the population had come down with what they called the Plague, majority of which was in the quarantined zone.

The Plague. Hah! It was just Yaba Ice, an intense case of allergic reaction to the Ice that led to a decimated body. Though, Kodama had never seen anything spiraling out of control so quick before. Still, he can't argue with the numbers. Their profit margin was outrageous! The junkies literally couldn't get enough of it. Entire neighborhoods, like the ones in Heiha, boiled over with Ice fever. Some of them burned out. Some of them kept on going.

And so that was why Kodama was standing there, to ensure that the refurbished goods can stand in for the hole in their supplies. And he was charging Heiha prefect shipping surcharge, for taking this thing off their hands.

Kodama was in the middle of a calculation when his second in command walked over with his transponder.

"Order from father," he said.

"What's the order?" Kodama asked without looking up.

"Come," said his second.

* * *

"Order from father, bucho."

"Hold it." Taoka Oda said without looking at his underling. He had his attention trained on the man before him.

"It doesn't have to be this way, Gwong Yon. We can work this out." He said, very patiently.

"No." Said the man. "We already paid you. We have nothing left!" There was a wild look to the other man's eyes, like the look of a cornered beast. The beast knew this was the end of the line, but it didn't have the smarts to go quietly. It would go loudly... and messily. That was fine. Oda can do messy too, if he had to.

"Yeah?" Oda rubbed his beard, then took out a cigar from a box on his desk, lit it. The cigar wasn't for him. He didn't smoke. He didn't believe in getting his high out of a tube stuffed with poisoned straws. But he knew many others did. "Take it." He said, offering the cigar to Gwong Yon. The man was supposed to be a customer... was a customer. But that was three weeks ago. Oda had short memories. He lived in the now.

Gwong Yon hesitated. He'd come on behalf of his people, refugees from the North. He used to be a simple boatswain. His ship ran the coastwise routes, ferrying passengers up and down the Huang. Kokkyo was the central stop, before they went deeper down South, or swerved left to the East. He wasn't made for standoffs with the local sub-Kumicho Yakuza boss. Still, a man had got to do what a man had got to do. And now what Gwong Yon had to do was keep his family alive.

"Take it." Oda insisted. "My peace offering. You can't refuse it."

He took it, his hands shaking. The smell coming off the cigar was rich. Olfactory opulence. He brought it to his mouth.

Oda watched him with barely disguised fascination. "You know, I had the head of the Greica over at my place last night. Just his head. His body stayed home." He said suddenly. "You know what he told me?"

Gwong Yon stopped short. A look went zipping over his face, like electricity over lab-cut frog legs. The muscles on his cheeks twitched. The cigar burned in his hands.

"He said a little boatswain sold me out to him. He sold me for five thousand drake coins and a clean set of identities. Said he was going to take you down South too. For free. What'd you think about that?"

There was maybe one minute of complete silence. Then Gwong Yon muttered. "My family..."

"Shut up." Said Oda, almost gently. Gwong Yon jerked, as if he had been stabbed.

"I will give you an offer. You can't refuse it." He paused for one second, considering. "You know how this will turn out, don't you?"

"No." Gwong Yon said, his eyes manic.

"Well, I think you do." Oda leaned forward. Oda was a lot of man, but in a stark difference with the Oyabun. Oda's three hundred pounds were all muscles. "Greica gave you a list of their... I won't call them teppodama. They don't deserve the title. Thug is what they are. Greica gave you a list. You will give this list to me, or I will count _**her**_ as accomplice to you. You give the list to me, and I let _**her**_ go. That's the best deal you get. I won't tell you you can save yourself, because you can't."

Oda watched the tremors on Gwong Yon's shoulders. He enjoyed this, he did. Then the list came out, clutched on one end in Gwong Yon's grimy hand. One of Oda's Kobun came over and took it from him.

"Enjoy your cigar, brother." Oda said with a smile.

Then he turned away. The Kobun came over and presented the list to him. At his back were some noises. They came from a dead man's struggling. Some gurgling sounds. Some splashing sounds. The smell of gasoline came over the air like spilled wine. Then a huff-puff, then the sound of fire burning and screaming. Oda took a deep breath in. He'd always liked the smell of Underwood cigars.

He took a cursory look at the list, then gave it back to the Kobun.

"How do you want it done?" The Kobun asked.

"Clean." Oda said. "Quick. Tonight. Don't leave the wives and children out."

The Kobun bowled respectfully, then took the list and went out. Oda turned to his waiting attendant.

"What does father want?" He said with a sneer, the word 'father' suffused in sarcasm.

"Father wants you to come." Said the attendant.

* * *

"Bring them in." Said Xu to his assistant as he took the floor.

The door opened. They led in the produces. Xu made a _tsk tsk_ sound with his mouth as he studied them.

"Not good. Not good." He circled the group, looking at their buttocks, their hips, their teats, their faces.

"What do we have?" His second asked

"A few B. No. C. C, all of them." He said as he inspected the hands of one of them. Her hands were scabbed over with calluses. A farm hand... maybe even a fishwife to be. How dreadful!

Xu spat out a gob of saliva, sneering. "Why do they keep giving me these rejects? Oyabun and his appetite. He keeps all the As to himself and give me these scraps. What does he want from me? How can I make a profit with these..." He shook his hands at the blindfolded women standing in a row without a piece of cloth on in front of him. "... things!"

He prowled a few circles, huffed in aggravation, then sat down in his chair.

"Bring them out. Give them to the brothel houses and the cheap geisha clubs. It will be the only good they can do." He gave the order. The attendant Kobun led the produces out.

"You didn't check them for their virginity? Might they fetch some price then?" His attendant interjected.

"Those things?" Xu said with a snort. "I wouldn't pay one more nickle for them if they were as pure as first snow." Then he grimaced. "This keeps up, and I will be known as the one who provide slave labor and indentured gigolos to the Western half of Hi no Kuni. That's not the kind of reputation I want."

"How do you want me to price them?" The attendant took out a hand calculator. He started clicking away.

"Anything you want." Xu said dejectedly. "Fifty ryu. Maybe sell them in bundles."

"That low?"

There was a moment of silence, then Xu turned to look at his attendant. "I've been in this business for forty years, son. D'you think I like what I do?"

"Uhmmm..."

"I don't." He said without waiting. He was babbling, but he had a bottle of imported Soju to blame, and it wasn't like any of his underlings would dare rat him out on his dirty laundry. He'd hang them by their balls if they tried. Xu didn't get where he was by simply being a silly old man. "Look at me." He lifted the front of his long shirt up. Below he wore a linen pants, the thin material showing a very docile loin. "I just got an eyeful of six naked young girls. Back when I was a wee little boy, they said if you looked before the wedding, your eyes would go blind, so I never looked. Now I can't even feel a smudge of excitement any more."

Xu's attendant made no comment.

"You'll know when you get to my place, boy." Xu said, rubbing his temples. "Female products, they are like cattle. You check if their udders are good and if they are still young enough for a spring and bounce and you go find someone who'll take them. Sold. It's all business. Nothing personal, son. All business. People want, so I sell. I don't have that kind of delusion of evil grandeur the other three have. I'm a simple seller. That's all I want to be."

The Soju was getting to his head. Xu stood up and made to get back to his home, to bed, to his bag-of-bones wife. Before he could get to the door though, a young Kobun poked his head in with Xu's transponder.

"What now?" Xu eyed the transponder, a bit irritated.

"Order from father, bucho."

"What does the old bastard want? More whores? Tell them he already raided my stock clean. Why don't he try the brothel house next, huh? Instead of my stock room." He sneered. Xu didn't like the Oyabun, who had no appreciation for his fine products. But the attendant didn't go away.

"No, sir. Father said... come."

* * *

The Kid was shaking when he got to the gate of the stadium. The back gate, not the front gate. They had something like a veranda top propped up above the door going in, and put a table and a chair to barricade the way. Two men sat at the table, chewing seeds and having spitting contest. A staple of bright pink paper sat between them on the table. Above the veranda, the neon sign winked in and out.

Application. It said in three shades of of yellow and red. Fifty ryu.

The Kid approached them. When he came near, one of the man looked up at him.

"What choo want?" He said.

"Umm..." Said the Kid, pointing at the neon sign. "I heard you're recruiting. I want to apply."

"Yes, we are." Said the man, scratching his chest. "A hundred drake coins. First leg in. Yer in luck, kid. The next match is right round the corner." Then he opened the staple with a flick, tore out a page and started scribbling on it.

"But..." The Kid stuttered, looking at the neon sign. Fifty Ryu. It repeated.

"What chur name, kid?" The man spat out a gob of seeds and saliva mix. His pen poised next to the line saying 'Name:_'

"Uhh... Teo."

"Whaat?" The man squinted at the Kid. He tilted his head so that his ear faced him.

"Te-Oh." The Kid repeated. "Like... Taeh-Oh.."

"Got it." Said the man. On the paper, he wrote down 'T-man'.

"Uh..." The Kid opened his mouth, about to correct him, but the man shoved a hand right to his face.

"Money up front, man."

"Uhh..." The Kid looked at the neon sign again, his finger pointing towards it. But the man could have been deaf, because he didn't seem to pay any attention to the Kid.

"Money, man. Are you in or are you out?" He made a gesture with his fingers, one that rubbed the digits together, making a squeaking, twanging noise.

"Next match is in ten minutes. Make up yer mind." The man's companion spoke up for the first time. While the kid dallied with the man, he had taken up a girl magazine and was now leafing through the glossy pages.

"Okay, okay!" The Kid surrendered, shoving his hands into his pockets, digging out nickles and coins. A hundred drake coins! How was he going to pay the rent after this? He thought, then tried to steel himself. No. What was a hundred compared to what he'd make inside?

The man took the money from him, grinning. "Righto, baby, righto!" Then he stood up, pulled a lever. A door from under the veranda came springing open, and the sounds that came out of it was like thunders in the silent night.

"Come on, baby. You are the star!" The man howled, cackling, pushing him inside.

They led him through a dank, neon-glowed corridor to get to the changing room. The bass from the stadium pummeled them like living drums. In the changing room, they gave him a set of shoulder pads, gloves, and a helmet.

"Don't I get the shirt?"

"Extra fifty! Yur up for it, man?"

"Uh... no, thanks." He thumped the inside of his empty pockets. Okay, it was a little less awesome than he thought it was. He stripped out of his coat, put the shoulder pads, helmet, and gloves on. His docking labor uniform looked ridiculous with the gears. He saw himself in the shattered mirror by the wall. He looked like a runt.

No. No. He paced the room, trying to give himself a last minute pep talk before they called on him.

_You can do this._ He said to himself. _You know you can do this. You're the best player in your hometown team. You have the scars to prove it. You can do it. You ain't going to be a dock worker your whole life. You are going to be rich! You are going to make it! You are going to go back to your village and shove a wad of money into Mei's father's mouth and shut him up and take his lil' precious daughter from him! You are going to wed her! You are going to fuck her silly on your wedding night! You are going to live happily ever after! You are the star, baby! You are a super star!_

They called him. He followed them. The door opened and the interior of Scrap Yard Paradise stadium descended on him.

"Ladieeess aaaand Gentlemennnnn!" The announcer boomed into his megaphone. The stadium sound system blared it to a raging crowd.

"Welcooomme to the twenty-fifth Ash League Rotoball game of the seasooonnnn! Tonight, we haaavvveeee..." The announcer made a gesture. The light beam drew the stadium's attention to the let-out gate opposite the Kid.

"The Devil Slammmerrrrsssss!"

The crowd went wild. The drums started. The music prowled like a living beast through the throngs of screaming people. The bass hit a primal rhythm. The crowd pulsed like a massive living heart, beating, beating, beating.

Fans, they called them fans. Thought the Kid headily. Fans do crazy things, his friend told him. Now he believed. He saw them going crazy on the stadium rows, most screaming, some crying, some half-naked and painted out in the Devil Slammers color theme. He thought he saw a half-naked lady on the upper row, then someone pushed him forward to the back of the rival team, wedged his feet into a pair of skates and put a balling stick in his hand. They injected a needle into his arm and slapped something like a sticker bandage smeared with strange symbols on top. The skates were not his size. They hurt something bad, but the Kid forced himself not to care.

Once I win this thing, he told himself, I'll buy proper skates.

Then the spot light was on 'his team'.

"And on this side, we haaveee... the Ekea Heeaattt!" The announcer rumbled. They opened the sound system on his side, and the sounds came out like hand-grenades in his ear.

Now the crowd cheered, and something happened in the Kid's belly. Someone must have dropped a hot stone in it, or he must have swallowed one. He felt intoxicated, inebriated, headily manic. His 'teammates' skated out one at a time. The light followed their trail. The fans chanted their names. Then it was his turn.

The Kid skated out.

"Aaaand the grid is is, folkssss!" The megaphone blared. "standing in today for Torosa 'Rumble' Desa eeezzzzz..." The drums rolled. No. That was his pounding heart. He made a figure eight skate line, shaking in his drunkenness. "... new comer Teeeeee-Maaannnnn"

_This is it_, he thought, _this is my chance_. He gripped his balling stick tighter. The area where both teams were on was simply an opener, a stand-off first taste. The true balling tracks were still gated shut. Then it came opened, revealing the behemoth swirling, gravity-defying loops beyond, as well as the rest of the stadium stand. It was enormous. The Kid couldn't remember ever seeing something so big, with so many people on it before in his life. And he'd worked the central Kokkyo dock. He'd seen big. He wasn't a lil ignorant country bumpkin in the 'big' of things.

"You know what this means, don't chaaa?" The announcer crowed.

"_**Double or nothing! Double or nothing**_!" The crowd chanted back.

"That's right, folks! As an unseeded amateur newcomer, if T-Man stands to the end of the match, he is entitled the survivor's pot of five million ryuuuuuu!"

Five million! God, he ain't ever seen five millions in his life! He ain't ever even seen five thousands! He made another circle, agitated to start off.

"Hey bumpkin!" Somebody called out to him. One of his teammates. A girl. She laughed. "Go for it!"

"Yeah, I will!" He shouted back, blood pumped full of bravado. Then grids started coming up out of the floor, locking individual players into numbered positions. As the rookie, he was locked in the lowest grid, the last one to get out and into the race. The game was as much against the other team as his other teammates. Winner took all. That was the rule. The Kid prowled in his pen like a bull, the pinching pain in his feet all but forgotten.

"But in the event that he fails..." The Announcer affected a dramatic lowering of his voice, from tenor to baritone.

"_**PENALTY! PENALTY!**_" The crowd screamed.

The light came down on his head. "You heard it, Tee-Maannn! We'll all be watching. But, without further adooo, let the game beginnnssss!"

The bell rang. A mechanical arm shot the rotoball into the air. The grids opened one by one, and the players took out, skating, diving into the looping track after the spinning ball.

The first player made contact, swinging his stick against the rotoball. The race was on.

"Champion Aja 'Armblessed' Kutty has the ball! It is rolling, folks. Stick out ya arms! Stick out ya arms!"

The spectators on the lowest, front row seats slammed against the safety fence separating the seating and the track, sticking out their arms through the diamond-back patterns. "Take mine, champion!" They howled. "Take mine!"

The Kid raged in his pen. _Lemme out! Lemme out! _In the flurry of his anger, he dimly registered one of Aja Kutty's fans holding up his bleeding stumps, crying in ecstasy. "He took mine! It's on his head! My god! He took mine! My arms will bring him to victory!"

Then, at last, his grid opened, and he took off with all the pent-up rage and frustration of repressed adolescence. He dove into the track, racing after the others.

"Betting pools are open, folks! Chip in! Make yur guesses for the night! And for those cool dudes in the VIP section, know that we've just opened our new exclusive service: the Caedicy Surrogate Pods. For only two million ryu, you can get your own Surrogate Coffin. Link in! Jack up! It will be an experience y'all never forget."

The Kid put the rest of that chatter out of his ears. He concentrated on the track. His feet were burning. His skates scratched sparks out of concrete track floor. He passed one, two, three players.

"What's this, folks? Looks like our new rookie is an upstart."

No. He was simply built lighter. He was only seventeen, and underfed. That meant he was faster, and smaller. As the grappling started, the Kid simply maneuvered pass them. The center of conflict was around Aja Armblessed Kutty. He had the rotoball, stuck tight to the end of his balling stick. The Kid wasn't after the ball. He wasn't out to win the race or gain control of it, which would have netted him a handy million every five minutes he held on to it, but would guarantee a gaggle of rivals baying for his blood. He was only out to survive. That was exactly how he was going to 'win'—by playing to his advantage. He would stand to the end of the game. He wasn't going home without his five millions.

"Let's see how our T-man's odds are looking! Bring up the Board!"

At the announcer's behest, they pulled a number board up on a hanging frame. The numbers said...

"A hundred to one! There it is, folks! A hundred to one! Think he's got it? Think he's gonna win? It's not too late to place yer bet. Y'all never know!"

A hundred to one? That ain't bad. But he could do better. The race track went in for a loop. Somersault Hill they called it. Up was down. Down was up. One, two, three times. He free-fell. His stomach looped around his throat. _No. No. Hold it in!_ The players he'd passed went past him, jeering.

His dinner went spewing out his mouth, but he didn't stop. He felt lighter still, as though all the anxiety and all the stress in him had come out with the vomit. The race was still on. He made a good land on the track after the twisting loops, skidding a good half mile through the tubed section, passed even more players. He righted himself. He raced.

Yes! He could see the light! Yes! he was out of the tube! Only one more section 'til the circuit! A mile ahead was the zig-zagging Hell Bridge Hairpin, and after it, the Rat Race, a section of twenty different tube selections, all bending and twirling in breakneck angles. All of them came at the closing line of the circuit. The Kid knew them like the back of his hands. In one of those twenty was a tube called The Littlest Rat. The Littlest Rat was his key to victory. Out of all the players, only he was small enough to get in and get through. Once he was inside, he was safe.

"Will you look at it, folks! He persists!" The sound system buzzed in his ears, dimmed by adrenalin. One more. Just one more! Over the bridge! The most dangerous path. After it, it wouldn't matter if he got the ball or won the race, he'd still have survived. He'd still get the survivor's pot!

The Kid felt a smile spreading on his face. He could smell the rubber burning off the soles and skids of his skates. He didn't care. He'd cleared half of the bridge. Then something happened. A player passed him. A teammate. That girl who told him to go for it at the start. She was racing on a light, unmuscled body too.

"Hey bumpkin!" She smiled brilliantly through the plastic-coated metal bars and chinstrap of her helmet. "Nice try." Then she wheeled her skates in, colliding into him. the Kid squeaked in surprise. _What the fuck! That wasn't in the rules! What the fuck, bitch!_ They were on high speed. He couldn't dodge her. Their limbs tangled, skate wheels squealing. They went flying out over the bridge first-tier banister.

"Woaaahh! My punks and punksies! Check this out! An aerial battle in high speed, right at the throat of Hell Bridge Hairpin! Our rookie against Natra 'Gate Guarder' Maha! Who woulda thunk! Teeeee-Man's odds are dropping like hot lead in the betting pools!"

Double suicide? But why?

Before he could think of an answer, the girl maneuvered her body into a tight curl, springing him with her. They spun in free-fall. He tried to bring his balling stick into her face, but she wielded her own stick with far more experience than he ever had. Her stick snagged into the crook of his shoulder pads, locking him in place. Then she disentangled her legs at just the right time, when the Kid was still only starting to understand that her body was far more limber than his, and she played this to her strength. She went flying in, following the trajectory of the circle spin. She landed in the safe zone, in the second-tier track. The Kid went flying out. He cleared the second rail guard, and beneath, Hell... or so said the stadium dev team.

Hell was a lot of spikes. Garish, and overdone, but the spikes were real, and the height even more real. He fell, screaming. This couldn't be happening! No! He survived! He did! He just needed to make the Littlest Rat! The spikes grew bigger in his vision. He screamed, squealed. The crowd chanted.

"_**PENALTY! PENALTY!**_"

Then...

…. En came busting out from his pod, panting. He laughed, loud and long, until his laugh turned into popping peals of giggles. His attendant came in through the door of his personal suite.

"How was it?" He asked.

"Fantastic! We're going to make billions!" En boomed happily. It was uncharacteristic of him, a usually soft-spoken high-born gentleman, but he couldn't help it this time. He took one step out of the pod. His leg gave in immediately and he fell, crashing to the floor. His body was still flooded with neuro-chemicals from linking in with the rookie's death, weak and trembling. The orgasm of death had not yet left him. He kept laughing still.

Death. Ain't nothing like death. The ecstasy of it, the light, the explosion, the sensation. Better than wine, better than sex, better than drugs. Death was the ultimate drug, and pain was its companion. Pain, the sweetener of pleasure. A true connoisseur must know how to utilize pain in his pursuit of the ultimate physical gratification.

En could see hundreds of his choice clientele queueing up for a taste of what he'd just experienced. So he lay there on the floor, laughing until he'd had his share, until he was full to the brim with unbridled joy. When he finally got up, the carpeted floor was greasy with his sweat and amniotic pod fluid. The attendant handed him his robes. He put them on, watching the race wind down through the floor-to-ceiling window of his suite.

The rookie... what was his name again? Well, whatever it was, his brain was floor wax now.

"Please get somebody to clean that up." He told his attendant, very politely. En knew his etiquette, sub-Kumicho Yazuka or not.

"How was the experiment?" Asked the attendant.

En's grin stretched from ear to ear. "Superb. That was a fine guinea pig. Perfect!" He shuddered at the ghost of the Kid's emotions. He was a fine choice, young and naive and eager. How he had jumped and quivered at the thought of being more than he was. How he thirsted for acknowledgement. The sweetness of his hope, his dreams, then to feel it crushed right at its peak.

Ahh...

But En composed himself, and let none of those showed on his face. "Are there more like them where he comes from?" He asked. He was extremely pleased with how the mind-linking seal had come about. He reminded himself to pay extra to the Clan who designed the seal.

"Many." Said the attendant. "And all very eager to be chosen."

"Good. Good." He patted his hair dry with a towel. Then combed it, gelled it.

"What did the beta-testers say?"

"They love it." The attendant proffered a letter from his pocket. "The Governor would like to share his pod with his mistress next time." In one single motion, En took the letter, passed it by, then dropped it off in the dustbin. "Triple the Governor's price next time."

"Bucho..." A mid-range Kobun knocked on the open door of En's suite.

"Yes, my dear?"

"Message from father..." The Kobun held up En's personal transponder. "He's calling you home."

"Oh?" En said simply, sitting delicately on his office desk and looking at the transponder in the Kobun's hand with interest.

Outside, the announcer crowed the end of the game.

"That's it, folks! What a day, eh? What a match! Go home, tuck in your bed, have a nice sleep, dream about us, aaaaaand goooooood night, Kokkkkyyyo!"

* * *

Xu sniffed as he entered the Oyabun's private residence. The air smelled strongly of antiseptic and industrial-grade detergent liquid. His fellow So-Hunbucho beside him, En, mirrored his action.

"What has he done now?" En grimaced, walking daintily into the guest hall, the tail of his opulent fur cloak trailing delicately behind. The Oyabun's guards stood at attention beside the door leading in.

"Do you really want to know?" said Kodama, who had just arrived via his personal carriage. He pointed with a jerk of his head at the squeaky clean floor of the reception room. Newly cleaned. Xu can still feel the moisture in the air. Something had happened here very recently. Something of an... unclean... nature, which was about ninety-nine percent of all the things that can happen in these halls.

"I can well imagine." Oda lumbered, walking past his fellow So-Hunbucho. He was a mountain in man's form, and as he stood before the guards, he dwarfed them by a good head.

"I am here at Father's request." He said simply. The guards stood aside, leaving the door opened. No So-Hunbucho was allowed his own personal guards or attendants with him when visiting the Oyabun. Such was the rule of the Nezumi.

They walked in silence, none of them talking. The silence was rife with tensions, the minutest of their actions riddled with concealed meaning.

A maid showed them the way to a conference room. As they passed, he checked her out, merely on professional habit. She was a B, middle-range, with a nice rack. He decided, then frowned. Even the maids in Oyabun's house were Bs, and he expected Xu to make money with the rejects he didn't want for himself? Bahh!

Then his irritation subsided, and the previous sensation of disquiet took the center stage. Something about the Oyabun's call unsettled him... or it could have been that bottle of Soju talking rubbish to the back of his cranium. Xu kept his mouth shut, caging the alcohol to the inside of his brain. He certainly wouldn't want it to start talking through his mouth for him too.

They pooled into the room, fanning out, each to a seat of his own. The desk was enormous, meant for thirty. It barely accommodated the four So-Hunbucho. It was a pentagonal shape, designed solely for the use of Oyabun and his four So-Hunbucho. On four of its wings, four sets of god-plated porcelain cups of wine were laid out. On the fifth wing, the central wing, a tall, graceful crystal glass bearing a pale white liquid stood, a slender gold spoon and a cup of sugar cubes next to it.

Xu took his seat, as did the others. He sniffed at his wine, the smell coming off of it was divine, then eyed the glass. What was it? Milk? They exchanged bewildered looks.

Then the door opened and in came a woman. At the sight of her, only her back really, because she had turned so quick he couldn't see her face, Xu sat up straight ramrod.

'A!' His Soju-soaked brain squealed from purely professional habit. Just from the back. And what a shapely back it was. Toned, slender, with a tiny waist and a set of deliciously curving hips. Then he heard the click of the door locking. She had locked the door.

What?

Then she turned around, facing them.

Xu's brain went blank for a second. Opposite of him, En took on a mildly interested look.

"Well, aren't you sweet?" The So-Hunbucho of blood sports and gambling drawled. "You're in the wrong place, honey. Stripper's quarter is that side?"

There was a look of amusement on the woman's face, not at all disguised. She walked towards them, slowly, deliberately, absolutely at ease in the same room with the four second-most powerful men of the Nezumi. "I disagree. I think I'm exactly where I need to be." She said.

"And just who are you?" It was Kodama who pitched the question. Figures! Kodama's little man would only rise and harden for good numbers in his book of accounting, not for beautiful women.

"Your new boss." Said the woman, not missing a beat.

"Who died and make you the new queen bitch?" Oda spoke up for the first time since entering the heart of the Oyabun's abode, his whole muscled frame moving, vibrating, spitting out the words. Oda, of course, Oda made no bones of his... dislike... for the Oyabun. On more than one occassion, had Xu caught on to tidbits of possible coup plans. The fact that he essentially owned Nezumi's standing army was another thorny issue in the So-Hunbucho's relationship with Oyabun. But so far, Oyabun had kept a tight leash on him. So far, the dog had not had the chance to come in for a bite.

So far...

Xu wanted to scoot a good distance away from Oda. He despised men like Oda, who almost never held an appreciation for his fine stock or his trade, and by their sheer nature, possessing a violent, physical power that he could never dream of touching.

Shockingly, the woman was not at all intimidated by Oda. There was a crooked edge to her smile now.

"This guy." She said in reply, setting down a severed head on the table, then sat down on the fifth wing seat, Oyabun's seat.

Complete and absolute silence reigned in the room. The head commandeered all of their attention. Bloating, but not bleeding, the cut had been cauterized. The skin color suggested it had been cut off within the last three hours or so. Some hair had fallen off. Oyabun's severed head stared at them with its white-outed eyes on the table. The expression was one of pure animal terror.

The nameless woman pulled the milk glass closer, took a sugar cube, dropped it in. The splashing sound it made was thunderous in the quiet of the room.

From his seat, En moaned softly, his face flushed, not with fear, but the helpless anticipation of pleasure. Kodama, on the other hand, crumbled into his seat, as if he was an inflatable doll with its plug pulled off and its air running out its guts. Xu himself... wasn't sure what he was doing. Perhaps a mixture of En and Kodama's reaction. Pleasure, mingled with fear.

Ahh, but beauty, sheer physical beauty had much in common with terror. Beauty was terror. When a man called something beautiful, he quivered before it... much like Xu did now.

"You..." Oda boomed, rising from his seat, the only one with a different reaction. His answer was one of anger. He had his hand on the hilt of his war-axe. Oda made a point to irritate the no-weapon rule in Oyabun's house. The axe was bound, but only with thin, ropey restraint.

"Please sit down." Said the woman. She wasn't even looking at Oda. In stead, she was swirling her milk with the gold spoon. The spoon made soft little clinking sounds against the glass wall. "I mean it. Sit down and chill out, drink your wine, or you'll regret it."

That wasn't going to happen.

"Lay down and die, NOW!" Oda roared, ripping its axe from its restraint. The next thing to happen was all but inexplicable. There was a wooshing, ripping sound, like an arrow had just been let loose. Something slammed into Oda, his three hundred pounds of pure muscle and rage went flying backward. He hit the wall with a thunderous boom. He stayed there, hands lax, feet dangling above a good half foot above the floor.

Something forced itself in and out of Xu's mouth. His breaths. His eyes adjust slowly. The room was not lacking in light, but it took him a full minute to take in what he was looking at.

Oda was nailed to the wall from his head. The right side of his face had caved in entirely. From the socket of his right eye, the tail of the golden spoon was visible. A drop of blood ran down its length, mingled with residual milk, formed a pinkish liquid drop, and fell... Oda's legs thrashed with the spasm of death. The muscles of his hands slowly relaxed, finally getting the signal that this body was no longer up and running. The battle axe fell from his hand, thudding uselessly against the ground.

Another minute, during which Xu forced his eyes back to the woman. She was sitting, leaning back in her chair, swinging her milk glass with one hand while her other hand drummed the table.

The spoon was gone. Xu had to confirmed that fact.

"I should have told them to give me two." The woman muttered. Then she looked at them. "Or maybe a full set."

The implication of her statement was readily apparent. Xu opened his mouth to assure her he had no intention to take after the brutish Oda, but not a muscle on his mouth obeyed him. He was frozen stiff to the spot.

Beauty. terrifying beauty. That was her.

'A plus!' Xu's brain screamed. 'A a thousand times!' She had the beauty of a finely crafted katana, cutting, cruel, and absolutely without mercy. He imagined even the famed Masamune wouldn't carve as deep a cut in men as her gaze. If Xu had only one like her in his book, he'd be able to buy kings and princes, entire lands and nations. Hysterically, he wondered how Oyabun managed to find one such as her, and just how much did he pay for her... outside from his life.

"Or maybe not." She sniffed once, apparently unimpressed with the three surviving So-Hunbucho. She brought the milk glass to her mouth, drank it. Xu was mesmerized by the movements of her pale, slender throat. Then she set the glass down, looked at them.

"What are you waiting for?" She made a gesture at the wine cups. "Tonight, your Bakuto will mark you as mine, and I yours."

Bakuto. The sacred pact of the Yakuza, binding the Oyabun to his... her... Kobun. Of course, the cups. Acting purely on reflex, Xu brought his hand up. A knife had been prepared for each of them. Xu hadn't notice his as he came in, so preoccupied was he with his own worries. He took up the knife, brought it across his palm, sliced.

His blood flowed a thin trickle into the cup, mixing with the wine. Without stopping to staunch his bleeding hands, he took up his cup. Across the table, the other three So-Hunbucho had done the same. And at that last moment, they shared a look, all equally helpless to this still nameless woman's thrall.

He upped his cup, drank heartily. The wine was warm, salty, heady, tangy. it reached its hands deep into his chest, his belly, his heart. Xu felt the barbs of poison mixed in it. He'd tasted enough poisons to know when there was one in his drinks. Of course, the new Oyabun couldn't have counted on the sacredness of Bakuto alone as guarantee against betrayal. But in Xu's opinion, the poison in the wine was redundant. In his opinion, her personal poison alone was plenty enough to enslave them to her will.

"Alright, listen up." She said as soon as they were done. "I don't have much time." She paused, looked up at the clock on the wall. Three-fifteen, the clock said.

"My kids wake up at six, and I already promised them I'd make them pancakes for breakfast. I'm a horrible cook. That means I'll have to be back by four thirty to prepare. So I'll be quick about this."

Children? Xu didn't even stop to think it over. She commanded his full attention.

"My name is Naruto." She said, her voice soft, but unyielding. "And from today onward, I am your god. You will do nothing without my consent. You will say nothing without my consent. You will not eat without my consent. You will not breathe without my consent. You are mine, wholly and completely, until the day I release you to death."

Xu believed her. He believed her with all his heart.

* * *

The end of Fall, the year 3xxx,

The toad scribe scribbled down his account on the subject as assigned by the Great Toad Sage. The accounts were meant to track her progress and to compare them to the foreseen future.

On the same day that Hashirama Senju became the twenty eighth Senju clan head, Naruto Uzumaki took control of the largest crime syndicate of Hi no Kuni, the Nezumi, and within the next few years, would transform it to the most fearsome spy network known at the time. Meanwhile, the Senju Witch Hunt went on.

It would take ten more years for them to reunite, at the birth of Konohagakure.

* * *

**End Chapter 8**

* * *

1. I'm back, byatches!

2. Yep, Tis Femina is alive once again. Three guesses as to how and why. I'm betting your guesses would be a lot more dramatic than the real reason.

3. Update schedule is a rotation with three other on-going fics: Mirror Mirror (Avengers/HP crossover), Book Air (Legend of Korra foe-yay fic), and Cognates of Heaven (LOTR/Dragon Age 2 Crossover). The next one to get an update will be Mirror Mirror, then Cognates, then Book Air, then back to Tis Femina again.

4. Yep, I read the new Naruto chapter. Funny, I was just putting the finishing touches to this chapter when the new Naruto chapter came out. Guess I have even more materials to work into Hashirama now.


	10. Chapter 9 part 1: Unveil the Trap

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto.

Beta: Michelle T, Kevin C

Part II: Uchiha

II. Kiiroi Kami

**Chapter 9 – part 1:**** Unveil The Trap**

* * *

_The Hunter waits deep in the forest. There is nothing to do now but wait. He has been patient. He has studied his prey well. He has laid his trap in the making for the whole of last year. Now there is nothing to do but wait, wait for his prey to come._

_And there it comes, the great grey, a proud, powerful creature that is prey to nothing else but him. It suspects, but it doesn't know. _

_The trap__ waits for it. There is no way out._

* * *

_**Codex Entry:**__ Fuin Bunshin no Jutsu_

_A peculiar Bunshin type technique originating from the defunct Uzushiogakure. As its name suggests, it is a clone technique basing off of seals. It is also one of the rare non-combat type clone techniques. _

_Inspite of its name, non-combat type clones do not lack for combat skill. On the contrary, many of them possess superior durability and battlefield potential than normal combat type clones. They are simply named as such as to single out the fact that combat is not the optimal use for this type of clones... not because they are not optimized for combat, but because to throw them away into combat is considered both a waste and a tactical mistake. _

_Like other non-combat type clone techniques, the Fuin Bunshin requires careful preparation and time, both of which precludes it from reaction time sensitive combat scenarios. Each seal array takes approximately two hours to prepare and usually only one clone is produced. The Fuin Bunshin clone makes up for its small number and long preparation time with its durability and large range of abilities. While other clones, including the chakra intensive Kage Bunshin, can only utilize taijutsu, the Fuin Bunshin can use ninjutsu, genjutsu, even kinjutsu techniques available to its host... for as long as the chakra reservoir of its root seal holds up. However, the one ability that made its fame is the Fuin Bunshin's almost spotless imitation of its creator. It behaves, lives, breathes, bleeds, and dies exactly as it host does. It dispels under neither grievous injuries nor death. Instead, upon death, it will produce a flesh corpse that will bleed and rot as a real corpse does._

_Perfect imitation in all aspects... except for one flaw. The Fuin Bunshin cannot leave the premises of its root seal. It cannot take but one step outside of the array upon which it is birthed. _

_For this single flaw and its complicated preparation process, the Fuin Bunshin in the past was used for one single purpose only..._

… _to act as body double of important state leaders..._

_During the reign of Nidaime Hokage Tobirama Senju, the technique was lost along with the destruction of Uzushiogakure. _

_During the reign of Rokudaime Hokage Naruto Uzumaki, the Fuin Bunshin was rediscovered from the ruins of Uzushiogakure... and only appropriately so. _

* * *

He ruined the pancakes.

Six-thirty AM thursday morning, he had two kids running all over the house in which he had just killed two men the night before, and a smoking frying pan in front of him. The smoke was black, and it smelled pretty bad too. The charred mass in the pan might have been the promised pancakes if he had turned the fire down a little bit... or mixed a better batch of pancake batter.

"Naruto, I'm hungry!" He heard Hanzo hollering somewhere from within the house. He hollered right back. "Did you brush your teeth yet?"

"He didn't! He didn't!" That was Mo, ever eager to be Hanzo's tattle-tale.

"Shut up, I did! I did, Naruto!"

"Go brush your teeth." He said as he made the hand seals for a contained Kage Bunshin. Three clones poofed into existence right next to him. The spike created from his chakra use was concealed from sensors by the various seals he'd laid around the house.

"Don't forget to wash your face!" He added in before turning his attention to the awaiting clones. He pointed at clone one. "Go make more pancake batter," then clone two "Go make some orange juices," and then clone three, "Dishwashing duty."

"Dishwashing duty?!" Clone number three shrieked indignantly. "I'm the frigging Rokudaime Hokage! The most powerful seal master in all of ninja history and the Butcher of the East! And you want me to go do the dishes?!"

"Yes, I do." Naruto the original version deadpanned. He turned his head toward the doorway for one second to bellow at the kids. "Kids! Run two laps around the house before you come in for breakfast."

"What?! But why?"

"Do you want to grow up into strong ninjas or not?"

"Aughhh..." The pitter patter of little feet running on wood panel floor headed for the garden, then outside.

Satisfied that his order was obeyed to the letter, Naruto turned back to his flabbergasted clone. "Do the dishes..." He said simply. "... or it's poof-poof for you."

"Poof-poof?!" The clone repeated, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. "Just when the fuck did you add poof-poof to your vocabulary?"

"Since I took on two kids under my wing." Said Naruto, not missing a beat. "Also, you are in the presence of underage children, so mind your tongue or it's gonna be..." He raised his hand, showing a shiny steel kitchen fork in it. Its tines looked terribly sharp, definitely sharp enough to forcibly retire one recalcitrant shadow clone.

"Alright! Alright!" The clone surrendered—"I'll do the dishes. Man..."—before it went slinking off to the filled and filthy kitchen sink, cursing under its breath all the while.

Naruto took a look at the kitchen. Around him was the aftermath of an hour of pancake making trial-and-failure. It wasn't just the sink that was filthy, the whole room itself looked like a small army had just marched through it. There were egg yolk spatters on the wall. Broken egg shells and melted butter lay in heaps on the counters. So did used plates and bowls of all sizes and materials. The industrial sized trash bin was full to indigestion with half the content of three ready-made pancake batter powder. The other half was on the floor. Soppy-wet white flour covering with his footprints going all over them.

"Hey boss!" Said clone number one, holding up a torn ready-mix pancake powder box. "This pancake powder is the shit! I don't think this is going to work. I think this whole thing just went fubar like... half an hour ago when you popped open that months old baking supply."

"What did I tell you about minding your language around children?" Naruto brandished his fork in the clone's face, eyes glinting madly.

"Uh... uh... I mean... this powder mix is sub-par... and over priced! Look at what they are trying to charge us!" It stuck the box in his face, finger pointing at the number printed in bold red ink. 19 Ryu, the number said. "It's outrageous! We should totally infiltrate their headquarter, take out their armed force, snuff out their leader and take over the whole thing coup-de-tat style!" Then the finger went higher, pointing at the brand emblazoned onto the top corner. It read.

Samurai Yoh Pancake Mix. Bring out your inner Samurai every morning!

"And Samurai? Lame! It should totally be Ninja Pancake Mix or something! We could so change the name once we are the boss of that pancake mix company! What do you think? Totally cool right?" The clone blathered on, looking at him expectantly. In reply, Naruto brought up the fork in a slanting angle... straight into the clone's face. It dispelled with a scream of agony and betrayal... and a poof.

He turned on his feet, eyeing the remaining two clones as they tried to appear hard at work. He turned the 'bloodied' fork in his hand. The gears turned in his head.

The mission was simple. Make pancakes for breakfast. Make **good** pancakes for breakfast. Make them **in time**.

The house was a lot bigger than it looked from the outside. Assuming he guessed the correct length of the kid's pace, it would take them fifteen minutes to go two rounds, approx. He'd send them off to morning workout once they came in. Another fifteen. Then had them wash their hands and stuffs like that, it would all give just about thirty minutes, half an hour to put breakfast-worthy pancakes on the dish. Thirty minutes. He wasn't a good cook, but he was a damn good shinobi.

He eyed his enemy - the empty dishes on the set breakfast table - then his two clones. The clones swallowed audibly under his stare. Ignoring them, he said. "I refuse to fail something as basic as making pancakes for breakfast." He twisted the fork in his hands, feeling his barely restrained demon-tinged chakra simmer under the surface. "I simply refuse to let that happen. We will put damn good pancakes on these dishes... or else..."

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.

.

They had breakfast in the garden, with sunshine on their heads and sweet morning breeze tickling their hair. He cut up his pancakes and squirted syrup on top as he watched the twin frogs eyeing their portion with something like dazed incredulousness.

"What's wrong?" It wasn't him who asked that, but Mo. She chewed and poked her raspberry jam drenched pancakes with a spoon, looking quizzically at the frogs. "You don't like pancakes?" In the other chair, Hanzo brightened up at the possibility of uneaten pancakes.

In reply, the frogs looked at her, their mouths flapping open then close, like they didn't know what to say for a second, before finally Aki turned her bulbous eyes to his direction and squawked out.

"You..."

"Yes?"

"... you made these pancakes... with senchakra..." That wasn't a question.

He took a swig from his glass of orange juice, dabbed his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. "What gave me away?"

"I can frigging smell it on the pancakes!" She held up the pancake in question for emphasis. The pancake was bigger than Aki, so it made for a peculiar picture.

"Really? I didn't know you can smell senchakra." Naruto offered conversationally.

"What's senchakra?" Hanzo jumped in, ever curious about all things ninja related.

"The lifeblood of everything that walks, hops, or crawls by on this land. And the ones rooted in it too." Said Zaki. "The greatest, most versatile, and most potent power in the shinobi world, bar none, surpassing even Bijuu chakra. The foundation of the most sacred shinobi training. So difficult that only the best ninja warriors can ever dream of attaining its power. So rare that there are clans out there who think it's a myth. And your mama over here..." Zaki threw him a look. "... used it to cook breakfast!"

"Only the pancakes. I pressed the orange juice by hand."

"Are you serious?!"

He shrugged noncommittally. "The flour was bad. It's already expired, fermented. There was water and dirt inside. I had no time to get off the island to go shopping for groceries. But I saw some of it was still good, so I thought I just needed to separate the good part from the bad part."

"You use Sage cloak technique to sieve the flour! Sage cloak!"

"It worked, didn't I?" Said Naruto. "Isn't that what Sage Cloak technique is best at? Separating the subject from outside contamination in order to freeze and preserve its condition. It's got a lot in common with basic prison barrier seals to be honest."

"And the stove!"

"It was off. There was something wrong with the gas tank, and the burner box had rusted. I couldn't control the fire. I burned the first two batches 'cause the flame kept going on and off on me, plus the whole thing was quite dangerous if you asked me. It could have gone kaboom on us at any moment. So I thought I needed something safer that would burn on just exactly the right heat I needed, and burn all over, not just on one side only."

"You use senchakra to fry pancakes! That's like using an elephant butcher knife to chop up a house fly!"

"Well, to be fair, a Katon would have reduced the whole thing to charred crisps. Senchakra has better control. You don't really want to have charred crisps for breakfast, do you?"

"That's not my point!" Aki opened her mouth, about to deliver another long-winding argument as to how and why it was absurd to use senchakra for home utilities purposes, but before she could get another word in edgewise, Hanzo had already beaten her to it.

"Are you going to eat that?"

"I... what?"

"That." He pointed with his fork. "The pancakes. If you don't want it then hand it over. I don't care if it's made of senchakra or whatever, it's still super good!" Hanzo's fork inched closer. His reversed-color eyes glowed with obvious intention.

Aki's mouth opened even wider, and there was a look on her froggy little face that said she hadn't even started on thinking about that. Next to her, her twin brother wolfed down his portion while eyeing Hanzo warily. It took Hanzo leaning forward and assuming a pose that made him look like he was going to make a lunge for Aki's dish that snapped her out of her daze. Before he could even blink, the red frog shot out her tongue in a classic frog maneuver, wrapped it around the topmost pancake on her dish, and yanked it back. The pancake entered her mouth with a wet, noisy _'slupp'_ followed by more chewing sounds. Aki spat out as she chewed, positioning herself protectively in front of her dish. The whole thing happened in two seconds flat.

"You have your own pancakes, brat! Leave mine alone!"

And just like that, the whole issue with him using the most sacred ninja art for mundane kitchen utilities ended. He drank his milk from a glass with spider cracks on its mouth, watching the now-and-then banter between the two kids and the frogs. It hit him right then that this was about the most normal thing he had ever done since entering this timeline. His stint at the Senju fortress couldn't be called... normal... in anyway, and from then, it had only gone downhill. Now, him sitting here in the garden with the kids and his retainer frogs, eating breakfast in a clear, perfect morning, it felt almost...

… like they were just ordinary people, like they were just people living their perfectly normal lives, a family enjoying breakfast and a good morning together...

... like he wasn't a ninja lord on a quest for revenge, and they weren't two kids who had just lost their entire life to a freak accident caused by him, and were now forced to tag along with a previously complete stranger, like there weren't demons bubbling beneath the surface...

Naruto had no words for the emotions that overwhelmed him then.

"What's wrong?" Mo looked at him worriedly, Hanzo right beside her. "Why are you crying?"

"Am I?" He said, wiping at his eyes. How embarrassing. His old ANBU bodyguards were right. Sometimes, he didn't feel like he was fit to be a Ninja lord. He had too much emotion. "Must have been something in my eyes. Sorry."

Well, that must have been pathetic, because both the kids looked like he didn't fool them in the least. Thankfully though, they decided not to press, a decision made under the table by Mo he was sure. That little farmer's girl was getting the hang of this a lot quicker than he though, almost scarily so.

"So... what's going to happen to us now?" She asked instead, an intent look on her face. Of course, just yesterday Mo was still banking on the hope of reconnecting with the last of her family's friend, the last link she had to her past. That link was gone now, reduced to a puddle that had since long evaporated into the air of that basement room three floors down under their feet.

He looked at their faces, both of them, and knew right away what they were looking for from him.

Closure.

In the same way that Naruto understood perfectly what many of his friends who started out their life as war orphans with nothing to their names had to go through from their childhood to adulthood, he understood the two last survivors of Woodsmen Ville without them needing to say another word.

Closure. Close this door that led to the tragedy and horror of their past so they could both go on to the one that led to the future. The missing Totoro was that last link, one that needed to be laid to rest before they could go on with their lives. And so Naruto would do exactly that.

He reached out across the table, took them both by the hands. Even in his deceptively slender woman hands, he dwarfed them. He held them, feeling the pulse of their hearts from their tiny kid wrists, the warm, sweaty flesh of their hands.

"Now... now we are a family." He said, looking them in the eye, letting them see his honesty. They said young children could detect when grownups tried to lie to them. They may not say it, but deep down, in that primordial sense that separated them from their adult counterparts, they knew. Naruto was inclined to agree with that. "We stay together. We take care of each other. Leave your past behind in that forest. Do not let it burden your thoughts. You cannot bring it with you. Think only of the future. Make your new life here, with me."

He looked at Hanzo "You are Hanzo, and you are my family." then at Mo "You are Hinamori, and you are my family." He brought both their hands together so that they all held on to each other. Then he said. "I am Naruto, and I am your family."

And just like that, he sealed their promise. He watched their faces in the silence that followed thereafter. Rarely did he see expressions of sadness and joy both displayed so openly on human faces. Mo looked down, then up, then down. Hanzo pressed his lips together, looking like he was trying to hold something in.

"So... so... how do we start a new life?" Hanzo asked at last.

"Now? Well, I guess we can start with making this place into a proper home." He gestured at the whole house, drawing a circle in the air with one hand. "It's ours now. Here's going to be where we start our new life. If you ask me, I think it's pretty beaten up, doesn't look fit for kids, so I say we fix it up and make it into what we want it to be." He added in a push, teasing their child nature to the surface. "Ever play draw your dream house before?"

He loved the look of pure wonder and unbridled happiness that washed over their faces. After all of last night, he found he needed these moments more than he thought.

"Well, it's time to get started then, since you won't be drawing your dream house out on paper, but making it with your own two hands."

* * *

Renovating a house, of course, was work that required more than two kids, two frogs the size of a large thumb, and one lone ninja. So that one ninja did a trick with his hands and called forth ten more of his copies to do the heavy lifting while he took the kids out to go shopping for supplies.

As he passed by the door, he reached up, unhooked the banner that said 'Tonari no Ryokan' in rusted embossed prints and threw it over the fence. It landed in the garden with a thud.

"Closed for business." Then he looked around the street. He had on his head one of them veiled hats he'd once seen women of old times traveling in, with fine white gauze drooping from the woven wide rim. He had found this particular one in the store room down the hallway, squashed beneath a stack of old one-size-fits-all yukata and slightly dusty but otherwise fit for duty. It sure was a lot better than what he had been covering himself with, wads of rags and a lot of dirt on his face. With a few glances, he took in the street before number 22 Yogekisha. It looked a world of difference under the light of day. The street less dark, the houses less shabby. The scrapyard at the end of the road had yet to wake up and resumed vomiting its daily quota of metal dust into public space, so the air was still thankfully fresh and clean.

He led the children by their hands, walking down the road. Him in the middle, Mo and Hanzo on each side, and the frogs sitting on the children's shoulder, they looked the picture of a happy family going out for the day. However, he wasn't a fool... or deep enough in nostalgia... to actually buy into his own make-believe though. As he listened absentminded to the children's excited discussion on just what they were going to do to their parts of the house, he studied the houses and the occasional people going about with great care.

He was of two minds on what to do with the inhabitants of Yogekisha, Red Bridge District. The fact that they are so close by - with nothing separating them and his children except for a few layers of wall and the seals he'd carved into the floor of Tonari Ryokan - put him on edge. The ninja and life-long fugitive in him squirmed at the thought of being so visible, so readily available a target, but he reminded himself.

This was a different time from the era he came from. The ten years war had cut habits into him that weren't necessarily appropriate for this exact period. He couldn't exactly make the denizens of Yogekisha disappear quietly after all. That would only bring undue attention to him and his children.

Just this once, a different approach was needed. He decided then that he'd have to hide them in plain sight. He made a mental note to buy back the entirety of the island through Nezumi fonts, several charity groups based in the upper districts, conducted a sound business plan to act as disguise, then flooded the current population with newcomers who hadn't the slightest idea what might have once been behind the walls of Tonari Ryokan.

They boarded the ferry and crossed the river into mainland city. As they were about to climb down to the other side, he handed the children each a wooden card the size of his palm.

"Your ID." He said in whispers, his voice masked by abundant background noises. "You are brother and sister, and the children of a minor nobleman on the Eastern side of Hi no Kuni. Your mother is the favored mistress. You are here on vacation so that your mother can get away from the first wife's wrath. Stick to it."

They took the cards from him, turning them in their hands. Each card was fastened to a leather string. He told them to wear the cards on their necks, as young noble and half-noble children were wont to do.

They were called Kuei-Chang cards, and in his opinion a little piece of old time brilliance. Before the advance of the hard plastic ID cards and information database, the Kuei Chang cards and their archives were the only method of keeping tabs and identification over the population. The ones he handed to the children, the Kuei parts, were only one half of a whole. The other halves, the Chang parts in a Kuei-Chang, were stored in an archive room on the Eastern side of Hi no Kuni, with matching wood grain patterns with the ones in their hands. Both were made from the same piece of wood, and was the only identity control method of the time. It was efficient and brilliant in its own right, but not foolproof. The Kuei pair he gave to Mo and Hanzo were testament of this. While they were legitimate Kuei cards, their Chang counterparts in the archive were registered to ghost identities set up by Nezumi as fonts for their operatives.

All it took was a little bribing, a little money under the table for the archive keepers. Nezumi had maintained this system for a long time due to the sheer scope of their operation, and now that he was at its head, he had taken advantage of it right away, confiscating several matching pairs with the right profiles to weave his protection around the children. He would prefer a less... elevated... background for Mo and Hanzo, them being simple peasant children would help them blend in far better than being children of noble parents however minor, but those cards were of the lowest social rank he could find. Needless to say, majority of children did not get such cards to their names, only ones coming from families of wealth and status.

He thought it strange to see such outdated system still in use in a city that people could buy electricity so long as they had the money for it. But then again, perhaps the central government, being typically conservative in technological progress, had lagged behind in this one instance. He guessed this was to be the few last years before the new hard plastic card system was implemented. But either way, none of that matter. What mattered was that they kept to their new identities and blended in as best they could.

"We look nothing like noble children." Said Mo, gesturing at the cheap hotel yutaka they wore.

"Minor noble. Very minor." He said.

"We look nothing like noble children." She repeated, putting more emphasis in her words while looking intently at him. She meant him he knew. He too looked nothing like the favored mistress of a minor noble, and while the children of said non-existent noble husband had an excuse to dress like peasant children, them being far too young to be bound by high society rules of etiquette, the mistress mother, on the other hand, did not. His assumed identity wouldn't be caught dead on the street of the most glamorous city this side of the country in a cheap one-size-fits-all yukata, worn shoes, and a ratty veiled hat. To keep with the pretense, he would have to act the part... and wear the part.

He groaned a little bit inside, sharing a look with a frowning Hanzo. "Alright, we'll go shopping," he concurred to a beaming Mo.

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The city plan of Kokkyo itself was considered an architectural marvel of its time, and rightly so. Starting from a diminutive border town some hundreds years past, brilliant and far-seeing city planning had seen it to its current height.

The city straddled the nexus point of three great rivers, and was shaped like a crescent moon with its curved back facing the mainland, and the sickle-shape turn of Huang river as its inner belly. Kokkians fancied the myriad islands of various sizes dotting the rivers as the stars orbiting their crescent moon city. The outer districts that made up the rim of the moon were largely populated by poor to middle income families, as were far-flung islands like Red Bridge district where they now called home.

The inner districts, the center of the crescent moon housed the upper class Kokkians—the rich, the influential, the powerful, and the lordly. Though there were no clear lines of distinction on the map, a Kokkian rule of thumb was that the closer one got to the heart of the city—Chubu island at the center of the moon—the richer and more powerful one had to be. It went without saying that the heart of Chubu was also the seat of power of the entire city state.

Naruto eyed Chubu island thoughtfully as he walked the invisible edge separating the outer districts and the inner ones. From where he stood, it loomed like a mountain rising from the river bed.

"This is as far as we go I think." He said to a grinning Mo, gesturing at the bustling shopping street in front of them. "Any further in and we'd stick out like sore thumbs" She brushed past him as she headed for the clothing shops, brimming with barely restrained eagerness. Hanzo tailed her, looking distinctly uncomfortable. The boy hadn't seen this much riches in his entire life, including the last few weeks they spent loitering around in the brim of the outer districts.

Naruto was about to follow them too when he felt a tiny prick in the inner of his forearm. He stopped by the door going in, raising his arm to study it. On his skin were scribbled a line in red seal ink.

**Come**. It said. **You will want to see this.**

The clan symbol of the Uchiha ended the sentence.

The first thought in his head was... that quick?... The second thought was less a thought but more a sensation, a burn like a wild fire in his blood spreading from his chest to his arms and legs, to his head, and threatened to consume him right there. He regained himself in seconds. The youki containing seal carved into him by the frog sages strained to hold in his boiling chakra.

No, he must not lose control here, or he would have half the sensors of this city on his tail. He let his hand fall, let it drop to his side and away from his eyes. He walked into the shop with slow, long steps, timing his breath on the same pace. He did the shopping without saying much, allowing his mind to concentrate on the children's chatter. Only when he felt the tide of his repressed chakra grew calm did he allow himself to go back to the message on his arm.

By now, it had already faded away. But he summoned it from his memory with no problem at all. The seal on his arm was a discreet two-ways communicator. On one side was him. On the other was the Fuin clone he had left in charge of Nezumi headquarter. That Uchiha clan seal... looked like a fresh print. The Fuin clone didn't just draw it onto the seal array to be transferred to the same seal on his arm. Something in Nezumi headquarter bore the seal of the Uchiha. The Fuin clone used it to print the image onto the seal array.

… something in Nezumi headquarter bore the seal of the Uchiha...

"What's wrong?" Mo's voice snapped him out of it. The girl looked up at him worriedly. Her hands fisted on the sleeve of the expensive tsubo-sozoku dress he was wearing.

"You don't like it?" She pushed.

"I think... I think you look nice." Said Hanzo, blushing a bit under the helm of his hood. "... very nice."

"Oh... uh..." Right. He was going shopping.

"Madame..." The shopkeeper cut in, a hint of irritation in her voice. "This style is the current fad, but I can't see you properly at all. If you'd just take off your hat and veil, we may actually get to selecting you the best looking and most appropriate wardrobe." Her hand went up as she said this, as if she was about to reach up and pull down his hat herself. He reacted instinctively.

"Lay off the hat. I like it." The shopkeeper looked taken aback. The sliver of irritation on her face changed to disapproval. That was conduct inappropriate for a woman supposedly of noble line. She stepped back, giving him plenty of space. "I understand a woman of your position must dislike the constant travelling, all these people. We do have veiled igasa hats in stock. They all have very wide rims, and the veil is made of fine silk." She added diplomatically. "That will keep the dust and insects away."

Nice try, but he wasn't afraid of a little dirt and bugs. What he didn't want was to show his face to the world. He disliked leaving this face bare to wondering eyes. It was... too distinct, too memorable. It attracted attention and attention was the last thing he needed right now. To be honest, he wanted nothing more than to walk out of this shop and make a beeline for Nezumi headquarter. The clone was right. He did want to see it, whatever it was that bore the seal of Uchiha.

He wanted nothing more than to go right now... but today was supposed to be for the children. They needed it. He knew they needed it. Besides, he knew for a fact that the samurai had intricate rules of attire. What one wore reflected one's station and status. A woman's dress in this period, and in this samurai-ruled city, reflected in hundred details her marriage status, her background, and the financial strength of her family.

He couldn't hope to even begin grasping these thousands of unvoiced rules. His assumed identity however was supposed to be an adept at it. Conclusion: he needed this shopkeeper's help in order not to completely trash his disguise by putting on something like a wrong obi color.

"My apologies." He softened his voice, bowing his head and assumed a docile posture, then proceeded to throw a made-up story of how his fake identity and children had narrowly escaped bandits on the way here and had to seek refuge in the house of a close friend. Then, and only after a few minutes of deliberation, he took down his hat. The moment the light shone on his face, the shopkeeper's mouth dropped open and her eyes widened to saucer size. A blush formed on her cheeks, spreading to her ears and down her neck with the speed of a wildfire in the peak of summer. Ignoring her, he went on.

"See what they have done to me? I am hideous." He gestured at his hair. After a month on the road, it was longer than he usually wore it, and slightly shaggy. As long as it didn't get too ridiculous, or get into his eyes during combat, it was fine with him, but to this period standard, this head of hair on a noble woman was a travesty. He assumed the classic mourning noble lady pose, with his sleeve hiding half his face and wet eyes, and effected a tearful wail. "How can I show this ugly face to anyone? My husband maybe only a minor noble, but I would rather die than bring dishonor upon his household."

The shopkeeper fell hook, line, and sinker for it, rushing to assure him that he looked beautiful nonetheless and vowing to use every last bit of her expertise to restore him to his past 'splendor'. Then she slunk off right after into the depth of her warehouse, promising to bring back the most suitable merchandise 'just for him'.

"Nice acting." Mo complemented, grinning from ear to ear. Hanzo spotted a mildly traumatized look on his face. Naruto was too distracted to notice that though. He was watching himself in the mirror. Now that the shopkeeper had vacated the prime position directly in front of him, his view of the wall-hang ornate mirror was clear. The face that looked back at him from the mirror...

He turned away. He disliked what he saw.

Thoughts of the Uchiha signet filled the void left behind in his mind, but he pushed them away. Now was not the time. Today was for the children, wholly and completely. He wasn't about to repeat his parenting errors with his first son on these two children. He had chased after Madara Uchiha for years. He had killed himself and gone back in time and endured hardships unheard of just for the chance to wreak vengeance upon the one who destroyed his family.

He could wait one more day. The Uchiha could wait one more day. What was the hurry? He knew from the start that it was not a matter of can or cannot but a matter of when and how. After all, if even death and demonic possession couldn't stop him from going after Madara Uchiha, what could? As he came to this conclusion, he felt the tide of his emotions calm. The urge to rush out subsided. Unbidden, his hands sought the children.

_Sorry, clone_. He thought to himself. _You will just have to wait._

The clothing took a full hour, during which he put on... and endured... his noble woman performance. When they walked out of that shop, they looked the part of a noble family, contented mother and her gilded children. He led the children past the invisible separation between the outer districts and the inner ones, looking perfectly at home with the passing richly dressed people.

Now that they weren't wearing beggar's rags any more and had some power to their names, there was a lot to enjoy about Kokkyo. In the sunlight and away from the poverty and the criminal activities, it truly was a beautiful city, a rich and happy place filled with wonders. He supposed all all ugly things had its beautiful sides and vice-versa. And now that he was the one in charge, so to speak, of its darker aspects, nothing said that he and the kids can't enjoy its warm and fuzzy razzle-dazzle side. For the next half a day, that was exactly what they did.

The first two weeks in he'd maintained that they needed to lie low. He had his reasons. He was new to the territory and to the rules of the game. But now was no longer that time. Now he was the new kingpin of at least half the underground world that made up the base of this city. He knew for a fact that he had at least a third of the local police department in his pocket via Nezumi's strongarm, and for that he was moderately satisfied with the safety of his wards. Besides, he thought they had earned it after the month long trek from Woodsmen Ville to this city.

So he let them loose and three hours later, carried their stuffs back home with both arms. They had sandwiches for lunch in the garden as they watched his clone took small pieces out of the house, reorganized and put them back together like lego blocks. One half of the place was a dilapidated mess in need of some serious renovation, or so his clone said.

"It will take at least a few days." Said the clone, wiping the sweat off its brow.

"It's okay. Take as long as you need." He said, watching another clone take the children to the good half of the house. Mo was adamant on painting her chosen room a glorious purple. Hanzo, on the other hand, stuck with blue and a lot of glow-in-the-dark star stickers. "I can call in supply shipments tomorrow if you need more." He looked at the bad half of the house. Only the bare skeleton was showing. Most of the wood panels and some beams had rotted away due to neglect.

"Are you sure that's safe? Strangers coming into our house."

"It will be, because I will make it so." He said simply, gulping down his glass of warm lemonade. For the life of him he couldn't remember what time it was of the year, but on his way back, across the river, he had felt that first chill that signified the coming of winter. Silently, he made a note to get extra wool sweaters and winter clothing for the kids, and cough medicine... can't forget the cough medicine.

"Whatever ya say boss." The clone cut in as he pondered whether to get grape or strawberry flavored medicine. "By the way, how come you got so many soap bars? Twenty? Isn't that a bit much?"

He looked at the clone like it'd just sprouted a second head without him noticing. "I used it all... this morning."

Immediately it clicked in the clone's head and he made an 'oh' sound. "Right, of course. I forgot." Well, to be fair, it wasn't something he liked remembering either. His clone simply reflected this subconscious desire to forget. He was completely honest with Big Rat, the ex-leader of Nezumi, last night. He disliked senseless killing. When he finally got back home just before the crack of dawn today, he'd used up all the soap in the shower scrubbing himself until his skin was pink and raw. He didn't want a speck of blood left in the presence of Mo and Hanzo. He suspected that in the near future, he would need a steady supply of quality soap on hand.

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.

In the night, long after dinner, he put the children to sleep. He lay on the best bed in the house with them, singing bits and pieces of songs he half remembered from a long time ago. Despite having to do this for more than a month already, he had not improved by much. They fell asleep in his arms, holding each other. He can hear their soft, quiet breaths, felt their little huff-puffs fill the emptiness inside him until he was full to the brim with them, felt the sound take hold of him, ground him, felt it wash away the cold part of his soul.

No words can describe this feeling. One had to experience being a parent, being responsible for these tiny, frail creatures to be able to understand. Children had a... cleanliness... a purity of essence... to them that adults lacked. And as he laid there with the children slowly falling asleep on his chest, he fed on this purity. As he thought back on the day, it occurred to him that today was as much for him as it was for them.

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.

.

Five minutes past twelve, he crept quietly out of the bed. The blanket slipped off him to cover the little boy and girl on it. He stood there, watching their interlinked hands. Despite the fact that he gave them both separate rooms, they had somehow still gravitated back to him and to each other. A coping mechanism born out of their time together in Woodsmen Ville forest. For now, he thought, that was fine. They needed time to deal with the trauma of their past and sometimes, it was better to do this with others than to do it alone.

He got out and closed the door. The twin frogs waited for him on the other side.

"It's time?"

"It is. You know what to do Zaki." The yellow frog nodded before leaping past him, ready to maintain his vigil over the sleeping children.

"Let's go Aki." As if she was just waiting for that, the red frog jumped like a loaded spring onto his shoulder.

"Right! And here I thought we would keep playing house for the night too! Now let's go kick some butts." She crowed excitedly as he opened the second-floor window, jumped out and headed for Nezumi.

* * *

**End chapter 9 – part 1**

* * *

1. Originally I planned to update this chapter in one go, but I changed the plan at the last minute and decided to add in one extra part. That extra part brings the chapter length to 2000-3000 words longer than planned and add 2-3 more days to my writing schedule. It's just a bad time that I'm getting more and more requests from print magazines and online guides to pen topical magazine articles for them. Plus, I've accepted a contract to edit the written content of an online site…. So my work schedule is getting even more erratic as of late.

This chapter was originally intended to be finished 2 weeks ago, but a mountain of article commissions as well as editing contracts prevented me from that.

So…. since I didn't want to let this chapter sit on the stove for too long, I decided to cut in in half and update this one right away. **The second half should take no more than a week for me to put up here (so stay tuned)**.

This first part is the fluff and release-the-tension part as well as character development. The second part will be more hard-hitting and set the tone and premise for the meat of arc-2 Kiiroi Kami (in which a war and lots of politics stuffs happen… and Naruto singlehandedly creates the first ever anti-nin Ghost brigade and becomes a legend under a pseudonym).

2. I once doubted whether it was a good decision to bring these 2 kids into the main storyline, but the further I go, the more I become convinced that Hanzo and Mo are absolutely necessary to the development of Naruto's character. Their influence gives him his humanity, a humanity that is not always visible when he is seen in action (like the last chapter)

3. The clothes Naruto bought from the shop is from Japanese Momoyama period couture. I thought it fitting since Momoyama couture was known for its decadent beauty. It's a good fit for Kokkyo I think.

4. In term of that "one particular question" I asked all of you last time… well… let's just say that I found many answers to be plainly awesome! But the truth is a lot simpler than that. Without revealing too much, I can say that I'm in a very happy place right now. I'm no longer struggling in a corporate suit and trying to fit in as thousands of other corporate zombies (bless their souls. But they are cool too, in their own right. They just aren't my thing is all). Tis Femina… as amazing as it is… put me on the map and paved the road for me to enter mainstream commercial writing and publishing business (whereas earlier my publications have all been art-house limited-distribution only… and in other languages, not English). I am working on my novels and am well commissioned by many magazines and online guides… but I still want to have fun… and that's why I'm still here, writing fanfics like mad! And yes, I just crank out another Naruto fic… a semi-crossover with **Starcraft** to boot. What I can say? I nerdgasmed too hard when Sarah Kerrigan ascended in Heart of the Swarm!

I am… very happy right now. And I want to thank all of you, those who read this story, and made it happen for me.

5. On a completely unrelated note, I watched and read **Shingeki no Kyojin / Attack on Titan**… and OMG, I want to write SNK fanfics! Yes, I do! An epic action, adventure, fantasy fic that explores the depth of SNK characters! But no! I must be patient! Or I will spoil it for my readers. October, yes. That will be time! For now I have to wait!


	11. Chapter 9 part 2: Unveil the Trap

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto.

Beta: Michelle T, Kevin C

Part II: Uchiha

II. Kiiroi Kami

**Chapter 9 - part 2:**** Unveil The Trap**

* * *

_The Hunter waits deep in the forest. There is nothing to do now but wait. He has been patient. He has studied his prey well. He has laid his trap in the making for the whole of last year. Now there is nothing to do but wait, wait for his prey to come._

_And there it comes, the great grey, a proud, powerful creature that is prey to nothing else but him. It suspects, but it doesn't know. _

_The trap__ waits for it. There is no way out._

* * *

_**Codex Entry:**__ Fuin Bunshin no Jutsu_

_A peculiar Bunshin type technique originating from the defunct Uzushiogakure. As its name suggests, it is a clone technique basing off of seals. It is also one of the rare non-combat type clone techniques. _

_Inspite of its name, non-combat type clones do not lack for combat skill. On the contrary, many of them possess superior durability and battlefield potential than normal combat type clones. They are simply named as such as to single out the fact that combat is not the optimal use for this type of clones... not because they are not optimized for combat, but because to throw them away into combat is considered both a waste and a tactical mistake. _

_Like other non-combat type clone techniques, the Fuin Bunshin requires careful preparation and time, both of which precludes it from reaction time sensitive combat scenarios. Each seal array takes approximately two hours to prepare and usually only one clone is produced. The Fuin Bunshin clone makes up for its small number and long preparation time with its durability and large range of abilities. While other clones, including the chakra intensive Kage Bunshin, can only utilize taijutsu, the Fuin Bunshin can use ninjutsu, genjutsu, even kinjutsu techniques available to its host... for as long as the chakra reservoir of its root seal holds up. However, the one ability that made its fame is the Fuin Bunshin's almost spotless imitation of its creator. It behaves, lives, breathes, bleeds, and dies exactly as it host does. It dispels under neither grievous injuries nor death. Instead, upon death, it will produce a flesh corpse that will bleed and rot as a real corpse does._

_Perfect imitation in all aspects... except for one flaw. The Fuin Bunshin cannot leave the premises of its root seal. It cannot take but one step outside of the array upon which it is birthed. _

_For this single flaw and its complicated preparation process, the Fuin Bunshin in the past was used for one single purpose only..._

… _to act as body double of important state leaders..._

_During the reign of Nidaime Hokage Tobirama Senju, the technique was lost along with the destruction of Uzushiogakure. _

_During the reign of Rokudaime Hokage Naruto Uzumaki, the Fuin Bunshin was rediscovered from the ruins of Uzushiogakure... and only appropriately so. _

* * *

The document on the floor was signed with the Uchiha signet and soaked on one tip with fresh blood. Naruto sat on Kodama's back and talked to him with a knife about it.

"Tell me what you know." The blade dug deeper until blood started welling out from beneath the pierced skin. "And maybe I'll let you live. Maybe I won't even cut off stuffs for souvenirs." Kodama was on all fours, and sniveling so hard his entire frame trembled underneath Naruto's weight.

"Onee-sama..." He said, voice nasal over his bleeding throat. "... please, I really do not know anything. This is Oyabun-sama's signet. He never let any of us in on his plan..."

The blade went deeper, dragging slowly from right to left, pulling a curtain of blood from Kodama's throat as it went. He listened to the sound of Kodama's wheezing, painful and laborious. Despite what must be going through Kodama's head right now, he got no thrill from the act itself. As any good hunter ought to, he appreciated the chase as much as the prize, but the act...

He wasn't a sadist, though in his line of work, that helped a great deal. In his mind, right now, existed only the surety of the answer. The prize to be had. Whether or not Kodama suffered for it, or died for it, wasn't something he bothered with.

"Let's try again, shall we?" He said as he looked to the other side of the room, to his one audience hidden behind a cream white silk screen. "Do you know what this is, Kodama?"

Kodama gurgled. That might have been a no.

"This... is a krix." He held the knife in front of Kodama. It was curved like a tiger's claw and no longer than his forefinger. It gleamed in the light, its black curved edge wet with blood. "Observe its thin blade. The people that made it, the Maja, they had a habit of flaying their enemies alive. You see, the god of the Maja required live sacrifices, so the blade used for the ritual had to be extremely precise, so as to not damage any parts that weren't supposed to be damaged, so that the sacrifice stayed alive, stayed fresh even when he was cut open, right up until the very end."

He turned the black krix in Kodama's field of vision, let him drink in the deadly beauty of a fine weapon, then he carried on. "Now I will not claim to have the skill of a Maja priest, but I'm fairly confident in my knife work... after all, you can still talk, can you?" He held the knife against Kodama's throat again. Despite the bloody gash, he'd left Kodama's voice box intact. He needed him to squeak after all. And squeak he would.

The metal pinched his torn flesh. Naruto only needed to apply a tiny bit of pressure to get what he wanted. A second later Kodama broke down into a hysterical mess.

"Don't be afraid." He crooned softly into Kodama's ears. His words came out like silk, lazily, languidly, the audiogenic version of poisoned honey. "I'm not going to kill you. You are still useful to me, and besides I think death is boring." He twirled the krix on the skin of Kodama's neck, watching lazily as flower patterns bloomed red on it.

"The human body is amazing. Despite all the ways to off a person that I know, it actually is not an easy thing to do. The human body is a tenacious thing, frail... but tenacious. I can beat you to a pulp, and you still wouldn't die, not unless I break you in... certain places." He knocked the back of the krix on the exposed nape of Kodama's neck.

"Here... is one spot, deep inside is your vertebrae, your lifeline. If I bring my knife in just so..." The knife went in, cutting through skin and flesh and sinew like hot butter, then stopped a mere millimeter from where the damage would be permanent. "... you won't die, but you won't live either. You will be paralyzed, unable to move, unable to stand, unable to do anything but survive, and if I cut your tongue too, you won't even be able to take your own life. You will be forced then to live the life of a flesh sack, forced to watch your power and rank stripped away and survive only on my pity. You will then live the rest of your days wishing for death, but will never get it until the time when I release you from life...

So tell me, my dear Kobun. Tell me everything you know about the Uchiha."

.

.

.

When the servants took Kodama out on a cart, the drug lord was already out cold. He probably wouldn't wake up up for another week at least. Though Naruto had not done much damages to his body, he couldn't say the same thing to Kodama's mind.

When Naruto was sure the servants were long gone, he turned to look at the silk screen. Then, with three steps, he walked towards it and pulled the screen aside. The original Naruto stood on the other side, watching him with a pensive expression on his face.

"I'm surprised." Said Naruto-the-clone. "I genuinely thought you would have come right away. You used to sleep thinking about it... revenge."

"I've changed." Naruto said simply. "And for the better I think." Then he walked out from the alcove where he had been standing for the entirety of Kodama's interrogation. He stopped once on the way to the work table, right at the spot where the actual torturing took place.

"You are really messy you know that?" He said, gesturing at the huge blood stain on the carpet. "That one is going to take forever to get out."

"I got it from you. Perfect imitation." The clone replied.

"Whatever." Said Naruto as he walked towards the work table and stood there with his hands on top of the pile of documents strewn haphazardly from one edge to another.

"He didn't tell us anything we didn't already know."

"At least he confirmed what we suspected." Replied the clone. "Think about the good part. At least now you aren't chased by half of the local police force any more."

"That's because I bought them out." Or at least, Nezumi did, on his order. And yes, that was the good part, the only good part coming from Nezumi today. It had been easy to send for all the reports on him that the local police possessed. There was an account on the barrier anomaly on the day that he and children managed to sneak into the city, that and some sporadic sensing of an alien chakra signature now and then in various spots of Kokkyo. The police knew someone had gotten in, but they didn't know who and how. No discernable patterns as of yet either. The handful of reports delivered to his table today was all they got on him. Apparently he had managed to erased his tracks far better than he thought.

Because of interdepartmental politics and the fact that they had so little to start with, Kokkyo central police chamber had held back on passing on his case to the higher military arm of the city... for fear of losing face. So in the end, all it took to completely eradicate their progress on tracking him was to order the destruction of that single case file.

The barrier anomaly of two weeks ago vanished along with the documents, and he and the children were safe... at least, from the police.

"Uuhh... the frog is a little lost here. Can somebody fill me in? What the heck just happened? Why did you cut that guy up? Isn't he like... oh I don't know... in the palm of your hand already?" Aki butted in from her perch on his shoulder.

"Well?" She pushed when neither he nor the clone spoke up. The clone looked at him, shrugging. "You do it. It'd be weird to talk about it like it's my problem. I know I'm a clone."

He nodded, then sat down in thought. He looked at the wall as he gathered and tidied the ball yarn that was his mind. A hanging collection of vintage Noh masks stared back at him. Apparently, the previous owner of this room—he had no idea whether that was Big Rat or not—had been an avid theater fan. It was about the only decoration of the room, which, for the most part, was both spartan and utilitarian. A window opened to the back of an alleyway, moonlight streaming in, bringing with it the beating of the waves in the far distance.

Kokkyo was calm tonight. Maybe that was a sign. The calm before the storm.

"I assume you are clear on my goal in coming here?" He said suddenly, still staring out the window, his gaze following the trail of floating dust.

"To gather information on the Uchiha, and to assassinate Madara Uchiha."

"That's right." He looked back at Aki. "That's why I am here, the nearest big city. That's why I took control of Nezumi, because I know even I can't track down, infiltrate, then kill a high profile member of the Uchiha without even the most rudimentary intelligence gathering tool. I may have a lot of flaws, but none of them are hubris. The mark of a bad ninja is one who think he can win a battle without proper intel and preparation."

In this day and age, the hidden clans and villages really were as hidden as their name suggested. The Uchiha even more so. Their elevated status and reputation for battles won simply meant that they had more enemies than any other clan. The sheer number of Uchiha ruins, safehouses and closed communities left behind in his time was testament of this fact. Even after over a hundred years, historians still couldn't pinpoint the location of the original central Uchiha enclave.

"That's why I need something like the Nezumi. I need it for its reach, resources, contacts, and the fact that it can operate outside the law. I meant to use it to track down a lead on the Uchiha. Then, this morning..." He took a scroll from the table, unwind it to show the red seal sitting at its bottom. "... I found this."

The Uchiha signet shone red on cream colored paper.

"It was in Big Rat's private mails. The leader of the largest crime syndicate of West Hi no Kuni was keeping personal correspondences with one of the two most powerful ninja clans of this period."

"Well... that's good, isn't it?" Said Aki. "We lucked out. That's our lead there. Now we can go after them right away."

"And what? We.. . what? Get the return address from this one mail and storm the Uchiha compound? Is that how you imagine it? Us, one ninja and two tiny frogs, facing off against a whole clan of Uchiha without even a shred of info on them? That easy?" He cut into Aki's naive enthusiasm like hot butter. "If I were the sender of this letter, I would only send it through at least three intermediaries and over a series of from and return address, so that if my... current partner... ever thinks of selling the leads on my whereabout to rival clans in the future, they will never get at me. This is not news to the Uchiha. Within the ninja world, the most potent weapon is intel, and the highest priority to any ninja clan worth their salt is to protect and keep secret any intel on them. First rule of the ninja world, survival first, make money second. I bet my own arse this letter is rigged and wrapped meters thick in countermeasures in the case that they fall into the wrong hands."

"Oh... I see. Then... what do we even do with it?"

He opened his mouth, about to answer that, but the clone cut him to it.

"Let me save your time, and just spill the beans for lil' frog lady here." Said the clone. "It's simple. This thing... is a trap." Then he added in before the frog could jump to the wrong conclusion. "Not for us. But for someone else. Tell me, didn't you notice something odd about Nezumi operation?"

"Well, not really. This is my first trip to the human world. I don't even know how you guys act normally. You don't even eat crickets!"

"Let me make it clear to you. What would a crime syndicate possibly need the service of the strongest ninja clan for? The ninja of this time operate as private militia for hire. Their services are usually contracted by small countries that cannot sustain, or do not have the expertise to build and manage an army against larger countries. What Nezumi deals in is business, not warfare. The yakuza do not profit from war. They can only sustain their business when people still have things that they can take."

"Could they have contacted the Uchiha for a wet job on their rivals?" Aki pitched.

"Unlikely. A simple assassination could have been done by one of the lesser clans, or even by inhouse service. We are talking street thugs here, no matter how organized they are. After all, Nezumi paid for its own private army, and that army need to earn their keep, don't they? Furthermore, one does not simply go to the Uchiha and request their service nilly-willy. They are the **strongest** ninja clan, with the exception of the Senju. Their clients are kings and lords. They will not bleed for simple thugs."

"Oh... I … suppose you are right."

"I am right." Said the clone simply, holding up the one letter bearing the Uchiha signet. "And... this thing was written in crypts. It's high-grade military double crypt. I can't even begin to decipher it. This crypt is not something a simple yakuza gang would use... or even know of. If the fact that Rat McBig-Thug was playing pen-pal with the Uchiha didn't send up flags, then this should. Big Rat had no business knowing something like this. This is way above his level. He is a buffoon. He did not even suspect his own death. He could barely keep his underlings in line. One was on the verge of usurping him when I took over."

"Yes, and he's dead now." Naruto added. The servants had scrubbed Thug McBeefy's brain off the wall in the meeting room.

"So you're saying that the yakuza leader we took out was a puppet?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying. And not just him, but this entire organization too." He gestured at the heap of documents on the work table. "I ran through their daily logs this morning, and you know what I found out. What I found out..." He pressed on without waiting for Aki's answer. "... is that this whole company is in deep shit. It's ten figures in the red... in gold!"

The frog was silent.

"He meant they are not making any money." Naruto explained. "On the other hand, they are losing money, big time. Now that's an anomaly. The yakuza may fancy themselves with an ideal, but without profits, they will collapse just like any other low grade thief guilds."

"But... Nezumi is the biggest gang in Kokkyo." Said Aki, her confusion plain in her voice. "I mean... look at this place! Even I know this must have cost a lot of money. If they are not making a profit, then where did they get the money for this."

"Exactly. You're catching up." Then he reached into the paper pile and withdrew from it a few patches of thin sheafs. There were numbers on them, as well as names, dates, and addresses. "Transaction records." He explained. "Courier logs... for the treasury notes sitting at the bottom of Tonari Ryokan. Every month, eleven thousand pounds of gold... in treasury note form is transferred to a safe house in Kokkyo. The source is unidentifiable. What I knew for sure though, is that this is how Nezumi stays functional. That's Nezumi's fund... not from their operation... but from an outside source... from an... investor." There was extra focus on the word investor. The nuances in the clone's voice betrayed the thoughts that hid in that one simple word.

Investor? for a gang such as the Nezumi? And with that kind of financial power? There were only a few individuals in the whole world with that kind of capability. The possibilities were... disturbing. It went without saying that both the clone and the original Naruto went through the same thought, and over Aki's head, they exchanged a glance.

"Nezumi is a font... for something even bigger." Naruto gave the conclusion to his clone's explanation. "I've seen their operation logs. And it's right, they are a mess. The operation is too big... and too spread out. It costs too much to feed a dormant army. And the drug they sell on the street cut down on potential customers just as fast as it funnels revenue back to their pocket. Short term, it's a great hit before the seller gets out and the house burns down. Long term? That's a suicide plan. They are making money, but nowhere near enough to pay for the cost."

There was a dazed look on Aki's face, her froggy eyes twitching. That might have been a bit much to swallow for one inexperienced nin frog on her first mission into the human world.

"Okay, let's start slow." He tried. "Big Rat is a puppet. Nezumi is a font. And someone else, someone big, is behind all this. Can you accept that?"

"... okay..." She replied, slowly, as if she was swallowing the message down her throat. "... okay, I get it." There was something else on her face, an expression that said 'you humans and your silly tendencies to complicate thing'. He couldn't say he didn't agree. "Alright. Was that why you tortured Kodama? To find out who's behind all this."

That was fast. Let it never be said that Aki wasn't quick of mind. He nodded, leaning back and sitting on the table, threading his hands together as he talked.

"Yep. That's about right. I figured if I followed the money trail, I'd find Nezumi's investor, and out of the three living So-Hunbucho, Kodama is the one who keeps the books, so I figured he would know something at least." A frown appeared on his face.

"He didn't know anything." Said Aki.

"He knew something." Said the clone. "He suspected. He's the guy who keeps seeing red figures at the end of the month after all, so he's gotta have questions. He didn't ask the old Buchou out right, but he had a guess at who the investor of Nezumi really was. He would have tried to exploit that knowledge... but the guess itself, the possibility that he was right... scared him. He didn't have the guts to act on it."

"Okay, then who did he suspect? I'm betting we have double the guts amount required to act on whatever it was Kodama would have done."

Naruto looked at the clone, who looked back at him. The answer sat on their tongues, hot and heavy like lead fresh out of the fire. The identity of Nezumi's backer, the man who had the power to call upon one of the two greatest ninja clans, and the money to feed a top class yakuza gang for a decade, probably the very same person who built the mountains-spanning maze in Woodsmen Ville.

"_**The daimyo**__._" He said finally, hearing the words coming out of his mouth and the sense of finality, of truth solidifying right in front of his eyes.

He had a guess, a very good guess. The chance that it was the truth disturbed him.

* * *

Tora Emon arrived at the foot of Joeki mountain range after two weeks of constant horseback travelling. From there, it took another two days for him and his escort to navigate the figure-eight maze protecting the plantations.

Woodsmen Ville plantation number zero-nine were charred ruins when they got to it. All traces of the fire that took down the whole village were long since swept away in the torrential rains and flash floods the region was known for, and all that remained were the black skeletons of what was once an important link of Daimyo-sama's great plan.

Tora sat on his horse right before the gate going into the village. The beams were charred black, flames of fire imprinted on the trunks. The air smelled cold, and wet, and musty. He sucked in deep, lungful of that smell, feeling it permeate his being.

"There are survivors." He said suddenly, much to his assistant's surprise.

"Emon-sama?"

"Blood stains, but no human corpses." Tora gestured with his head. "Someone cleaned this place up. There will be a grave yard in the back. Fan out. Find them."

His men obey his orders without another word, spreading out into the village on their horses. Two minutes later, one came back to tell him he was right and that there was indeed a graveyard in the back where there was none before.

He rode on leisurely, unhurriedly through the village to get to the graveyard, eyeing the burnt down houses as he went. Multiple starting points. He remarked to himself as he eyed the black dots on the beams and the wood panels. This fire was no natural forest fire that went too big for them to handle. This was manmade. Someone started it, going over the houses with a torch in hand.

The graveyard was simple, and slightly on the shallow side. He counted fifty-five graves in total, children and adults both. The file said Kokkyo population counted at fifty-seven.

"Two survivors. Deserters! Traitors!" His assistant jumped to conclusion. "It must have been them who started the fire. The Daimyo will have their heads for this." Then he turned to the aides trailing behind, yelling shrilly. His voice betrayed his nervousness. "Activate the tracker seals! We will hunt those dogs down and bring them back to the lord!"

Before the aides could move an inch though, Tora had already held out a hand, palm down. His personal way of saying 'Stop'.

"Sire?! We need to move quick. They should have cleared the border by now. We must give chase!" Urged the assistant, moving agitatedly on the back of his horse. "What are you waiting for?" He yelled at the aides who remained still, waiting for Tora's order.

"Quiet yourself, Ko." Tora said softly. Yet his simple, quietly-spoken words had the effect of thunders on Ko, his young, impatient, and inexperienced aide, Ko who was always so eager to prove to himself to the lord Daimyo. The assistant stood stockstill, his face a classic study of incredulousness. Without even acknowledging his assistant, Tora pointed at the graves, speaking slowly as if he was talking to a class full of children.

"Fifty-five graves. Fifty adults and five children. The files said this village had fifty adults and seven children." Ko's mouth dropped open at this. Realization rushed in to replace incredulousness on his face. "The survivors are children."

Then Tora turned back to face his recalcitrant assistant. "Do you, perhaps, think two little children can bring down this whole village, then dug fifty-five graves and buried fifty-five corpses in a fortnight?" And to make matters worse, there were no tracker seals on the children of Woodsmen Ville series, an oversight he would rectify shortly after this.

"Does this mean someone outside did this? Spies from the Ame tribes?" Ko pushed, trying to cover up for his blunder mere seconds ago. That was a distinct possibility, with Nami—the suspected spy from the dissident Ame tribes—held hostage here, but something in this village unsettled Tora. Something didn't feel like the hands of human were involved... or maybe he was just getting old.

"I don't know." Said Tora as he climbed slowly down his horse. His voice had not changed. For the full entirety of their conversation, it remained soft and quiet, more the voice of a timid scholar than the right hand man of the Fire Lord.

"You don't know?" Said Ko, half bemused and half satisfied. "So even you have no idea what went on here?"

"No, I don't." Tora repeated, still soft and quiet, calm and even, as if he was discussing weather in the royal court morning chamber, as he walked past the rows of graves and wooden name sticks to arrive before one without a name on it. In the place of a name, three lines were carved onto this particular stick. The jagged edges and angle suggested it was carved with a crude kitchen knife. The lines said...

_Mom_

_Your son loves you._

_Baby lives._

_Baby Lives_ was scratched out. And in the foot of the the name stick, Tora found the source of the glinting light he had first spotted when coming into the graveyard. A hair, short and golden, caught in the foot of the name stick.

"But she does." Said Tora as he bent to pull the hair free, then held it up, shining in the sunlight, for his escort to see. "If you want to, run the files again. But I reckon no member of this village was ever recorded to have hair of this exact color." Then he turned back to look at the graveyard. "And... dig them all up. Despite common knowledge, dead men do speak, and far more honestly than the living too."

* * *

Aki waited patiently as Naruto set the field for the story. A table, a knife, and all the knickknacks in the room. He used his knife on the handsome Mpingo blackwood table, drawing a waving line and separating the table into two halves. One half was slightly bigger than the other, and on it he wrote...

… Hi no Kuni...

The other smaller half was named... Ame no Kuni.

"Let me tell you a story..." He said as he doodled with his knife, drawing a circle near the borderline separating Ame from Hi no Kuni. ".. since you don't have the experience to follow my explanations. It's easier this way."

"This..." He pointed at the circle he just drew by the borderline. "... is Kokkyo three hundred years ago. Your classic border town, small and poor and always having to deal with cross-border raids from..." The knife moved to Ame. "... these guys, the warring tribes of the land of Rain."

Then he took a Noh mask from the piles he had taken down the wall. A Shiwajo type, signifying divine old age and wisdom. "Three hundred years ago, Sei Taishogun Miyamoto was assigned jurisdiction over Kokkyo and all the borderland of West of Hi no Kuni. At the time, the assignment was viewed as a punishment by the concurrent Daimyo, since Miyamoto, despite being of Sei Taishogun linage, was not a warrior. Instead, he was a scholar, and a diplomat of great skill. No one thought he could survive, not even his own mother. What I heard was that she wrote long tearful letters to him that took three ox carts to transport to Kokkyo from the capital. I heard the carts broke on the way too, because it was too heavy."

He put the Shiwajo mask on top of Kokkyo circle.

"I take it he did the unthinkable and lived." Said Aki, hopping onto the table for a better look.

Naruto laughed at that. "He did more than that." He said. "Not only did he live, he thrived. It was a bad move for the Daimyo to put him there, because Miyamoto may not be any good with the swords, but he was a top tactician, a visionary, and a shrewd businessman. He saw what many Taishogun before him could not. He saw Kokkyo's potential."

The tip of the knife moved again, drawing three thin rivers crawling past Kokkyo and forming a Y shape. "There's an old saying that states that riches follow where the water goes. It's doubly true for Kokkyo at the time. The position it had gave its the potential to become an commercial and industrial powerhouse, and in time, a political one."

"Well, if it's so great, then why was it not that dream city by the time Miyamoto came?"

"Because of insurgency." He replied, not missing a beat. "Building a city like that takes time. Establishing trade routes require trust and confidence from traders that the ruler of the land can keep them safe from bandits and robbers alike... which, at the time Miyamoto came, were basically an everyday occurrence. Bit hard to build a city with some dude holding a knife at your back isn't it?"

"Ookay... I get it."

"Now, what Miyamoto did went against everything in his samurai teaching. Instead of raising an army to fend off the raiders... as many Sei Taishogun before him tried to do and failed, Miyamoto spent the first six months of his tenure as lord of Kokkyo locked in his room. Rumors during those six months were that he was a coward and was afraid he'd be killed if he ever set foot outside. But the truth was, in those six months of isolation, Miyamoto created a blueprint that later on became the pinnacle and the source of Kokkyo's power..."

The blade bit into the wood surface, dragging a larger, deeper trenched circle around the Shiwajo mask, integrating the three rivers in its interior.

"He created the Wall of Kokkyo."

He kept the knife circling the Shiwajo mask until he had worn deep round ridges into the table. "Two kilometers thick in its thinnest point, covering the entire city plan on ground and underwater without hindering river traffic, inlaid seal grid to protect the whole city against chakra using infiltrators. It's the work of a lifetime, and he completed it within six months."

"That sounds like a lot of work for just one person." Aki commented, eyeing the circles he'd made on the table. Somebody was going to throw a fit over his doodles he was sure. Mpingo blackwood costed an arm and a leg for just a small piece. This table was carved from one solid block of that wood. He could only guess how much it had costed. Oh well...

"It is. Thought Miyamoto was the mastermind behind the blueprint, he alone couldn't do it, and neither did the ordinary builders and stone masons at his disposal. Just look at the scope of the project. More than that, not only did he have to complete it, he had to complete it as quickly as possible. A too long construction time would mean too many sabotage attempts from raiders, from political enemies of the Miyamoto clan, even from the daimyo himself. So he did something considered heinous by his samurai peers... He contacted us ninja."

"... wow..."

"Yeah. Ninjas, considered lowlife scums by his peers. But only among the ranks of ninjas existed Doton masters of the caliber he needed. Ninjas who could shape the earth to their will and build the wall of his design not in decades but in months. Miyamoto contracted three separate Earth ninja clans for the building of the wall, two other seal specialist clans to create the seal grid, and one clan to provide protection during construction. The project nearly bankrupted him."

"I bet his samurai buddies weren't thrilled."

"They weren't. For his dalliances with ninjas, Miyamoto was nearly sentenced to treason. He would have if not for his quick tongue and the assurance that he was 'only using' the ninjas as cattles and tools for his great plans and that he would discard them the second construction was complete."

"Why, that two-faced son of a…."

"I don't mind. He made the right choice in my opinion."

"But..."

"We ninjas have never been about meaningless bluffs and face values. We get the job done, simple as done. Glory and superfluous face values are for samurais."

"Still, that was not nice."

"Ninjas don't deal in the nice of things, if you haven't noticed."

"Okay, okay, I get it." She threw her hand up in surrender. "Seeing that Kokkyo is now one bustling, rich city, I take it Miyamoto's gamble paid off, didn't it?"

"Indeed it did." He twirled the knife in one hand, feeling the beginning of a smile bending the corners of his mouth. "That man thought like a ninja. He came at a problem from angles his peers never expected. He took a chance and hit the motherload."

"You sound like you admire him."

"What if I do?" He shrugged nonchalantly, then proceeded to carve more people stick figures within the circle of Kokkyo. "With the completion of the wall, trades boomed, and riches soon followed. Now that he had a base of power he could depend on, Miyamoto turned his attention on building the patrol army expected of him since the start. What followed is history. From a small no-name town, Kokkyo became the commercial and industrial center of West Hi no Kuni, even threatening to dethrone the capital in wealth and safety."

"That's a nice story, but that doesn't tell me why you suspected the daimyo of being the one behind Nezumi. We don't even know why he needs it to begin with."

He paused at that, looking at Aki intently, then at his clone. In reply, the clone moved across the table to his side, picked up a mask from the pile at his feet, then put it down on the center of the Hi ni Kuni part of the table.

The Mikado type mask, the one Noh mask symbolic of the power of monarchy, sat at the heart of Hi no Kuni. "It's very simple really. Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left behind, no matter how improbable, is the truth. There is no one else who has the resources and the political pull to both prop up a top class yakuza gang for nearly a decade and call in the service of the Uchiha at once. No one else has this kind of government insider knowledge to enable Nezumi to function as long as it has. Not even the wealthiest noble of the five nations."

"Could it have been the daimyo of other nations?"

In response, he held up a treasury note he took from the box at the basement of Tonari Ryokan. The national symbol of Hi no Kuni shone a bluish red under the pale electric light.

"Right. I get it." Aki concurred. "But still, I don't get why he did that? I mean... I get why the guy may be pissed off at Kokkyo, after all, this whole city is something of a 'Piss off, loser. You tried to kill me and failed!' finger from Miyamoto three hundred years ago at him. But isn't he the emperor? Why waste eight years of this useless scheming for something that royal decree can do just as well."

"Human politics isn't quite that simple, Aki. He didn't do it with a royal decree for one simple reason, because he couldn't. He didn't have the power to back up his decree. The moment he passed his punishment on the current Sei-Taishogun of Kokkyo, a decision that would be seen as unjust and unprovoked by many, would also be the moment he committed political suicide." Said Naruto, right before he set out with his knife again. This time, he drew three more circles within the border of Hi no Kuni, and with the original Kokkyo, they created a perfect diamond shape. "The city of the North, ruled over by Kita Sei-Taishogun." He pointed at the northmost circle. "The city of the East, ruled over by Azuma Sei-Taishogun" Then finally at the southmost circle. "The city of the South, ruled over by Minami Sei-Taishogun."

He made a gesture, connecting all four cities. "The four cities along with the capital, Nichiyo-shi, create a perfect political balance within the nation, ensuring that stability is upheld... at least, from within the court of Hi no Kuni. This balance is not a coincidence."

"Let me guess. The daimyo of the past created it." Said Aki, immediately connecting the dot.

"That's right. You are getting better." He smiled. "This was initially a response from the daimyo of three hundred years past to the unstoppable growth of Kokkyo into a new national power. In order to hold Miyamoto and his fortress Kokkyo at bay, and to cover up the fact that the assignment of Miyamoto to Kokkyo was a death punishment in disguise, the past daimyo sent three of his loyal Sei-Taishogun to the North, East, and South under the cover of creating a national boundary to protect the crown, and an acknowledgement of Miyamoto's brilliant city model. But the truth was that, the other three Sei-Taishogun were sent to the exact locations needed to create a military chessboard condition. If Miyamoto so much as moved one soldier pass the border of his realm, the Sei-Taishogun of the North and South would immediately bring their own army to counter his force while the Sei-Taishogun of the East would rush to protect the crown and... if need be, escort the daimyo in his escape Eastward."

"Something tells me it wasn't that simple."

"Politics is never simple." He said, smiling, then carried on with his explanation. "His plan worked, for a while. There was one problem with it though." He traced the map with his fingers, going clockwise through the four cities. He felt as if he could see the story unfolding with his own eyes. "In the same way that Miyamoto built his own power in the far off land, so too did the other three Sei-Taishogun. When they were just vassals of under the dictate of Nichiyo-shi, they were greatly restrained. Within the wall of the capital, they were little more than high-ranking samurais. Onced granted their own land and right to raise their own armies, eventually each of them became a threat to the daimyo."

As he said this, he picked up knight figures from a chess set he'd set to a side earlier, and in each city he laid down one knight. "Of course, the daimyo knew this would come. It was his intention that the three Sei-Taishogun grew in power to match the power of Kokkyo. They would be useless to him if they couldn't match Kokkyo soldier for soldier. He was not worried of losing control over them, because he knew what they wanted more than anything."

He picked up the queen piece, and held up in front of Aki. "Power hunger, materialistic greed, physical desire." He set the queen down beside the Mikado mask in the capital city Nichiyo-shi. "Political power is as much made up of hard militaristic strength as it does the softer pull of manipulation, seduction, lies, and threats. Each of the three Sei-Taishogun had a certain weakness for the daimyo to exploit, and for each of them he wove a tale of lies and mistruths. His goal was to turn them against each other and create an illusion over the true nature of their five-ways stalemate. The result was that each of the Sei-Taishogun believed the other three could and would turn against them at any moment of exposed weakness, and in turn, each of them held their forces at bay, and watched the others with distrustful eyes. A truly classic divide and conquer maneuver."

"... what a bastard..." Aki muttered disbelievingly.

"A magnificent bastard you meant." He laughed at the expression on her face. "Well, you can't say the guy didn't deserve his position as emperor. He knew his strength and played them to the max. The four powerful Sei-Taishoguns with hundred thousands of soldiers at their beck and call and he played them all like a fiddle. If just one of the four had the mind and the guts to see through his plan, this country would have been under a Shogunate court by now, and not a royal emperor one."

"Well that's not exactly true now is it?" Aki argued back. "The way I see it, Kokkyo still retains the upper hand. The daimyo's goal was to weaken and eventually destroy the power of Kokkyo and the Miyamoto clan wasn't it? I don't see a mountain of rubble where we stand now."

He paused there, leaning back on the table and letting his thoughts wash over him. He picked up the water pitcher on the side table, poured himself a glass and drank it.

"His intention..." He started, wetting his lips with a lick. "... was to goad them all into fighting each other." With one hand, he pushed the four knights forward, forming a double pincers on each side.

"Militaristically, they were all on the same level with Kokkyo on the lead in terms of war economy potential, and the years of lies and half-truths seeded by the daimyo would have ensured minimal chances for any of them to sustain a stable alliance with each other. If he could goad them into all out war, regardless of the outcome and which one survived in the end, their power would have been greatly diminished." With a turn of his wrist, three knights fell, leaving one standing on the field. "The survivor, whether they were the Sei-Taishogun of the West, North, East, or South, would have been easily brought back to heels by the monarchy, and the threat of Sei-Taishogun—too powerful and ambitious for their own good—would have been ended." Then came the queen, an elegant black marble piece. He set her forward in front of the lone knight.

"Yet it didn't happen that way, did it?" Said Aki "Or there would have been no city where we are standing now.'

"No, it didn't happen that way." He confirmed, leaning back slightly on the table. "You see, the daimyo's plan was flawless, except for one mistake. A misjudgement of character." He picked up the knight piece, holding it to eye-level. "He took Miyamoto for a warmonger like the other three when the man was anything but. This..." He indicated the knight. "... was not a correct representation of who he was. This..." He dropped the knight, then picked up a different piece.

The bishop.

"... is the correct representation of Miyamoto's character."

Aki's mouth dropped open, then close, and then finally she said. "He was not a warrior!" The revelation pushed her voice up a pitch.

"He never was. His stunning success with Kokkyo made people forget this simple truth and clouded the daimyo's judgement. Instead of a power-hungry warrior, whose entire value can only be used to maximum effect in war era and so craved for even more wars to prove his worth and gathered more power to himself, we have..." He set the bishop on the map, at the heart of Kokkyo.

"... a visionary, who understood that war never created anything of value, and that as long as he advanced his empire with only the spear and shield of his economical and tactical might, he would never lose. So he never took the bait, and did everything in his power to defuse the war seeds planted by the daimyo, and... because of his actions..."

He took up the discarded knights and set them back to where they belonged, turning the clock of history back on his wooden map. "... the knights never went to war."

"The queen never got to exercise her power on the lone survivor."

" And the daimyo's plan... fell apart."

He put one hand across the table, his forefinger nudging the black queen, pushing until she fell over with a clatter.

"Time passed. Eventually, old age took them all, the four Sei-Taishogun and the daimyo of three hundred years past. However, their legacy lives on. Kokkyo continued to grow, dwarfing the other three cities in riches, power, and scope. The perfect time when they were still on the same level had already passed, so even when the daimyo's successor wanted to initiate the same plan on the successors of the four cities, it never bore fruits. And so here we are, with an autonomous city state that's too rich and too powerful for its own good, and a young ruler that's by all accounts, incredibly popular with his own people." As he said this, he picked the Shiwajo mask off the table, and in its place he set down the Imawaka, the far younger but of no less talent and noble lineage than the Shiwajo.

"Tsuki no Miyamoto, reigning Sei-Taishogun of Kokkyo for the past fifteen years. His greatest victory was the Northern border war, where he took his men and went in aid to the Northern border city. They said he and his army won that war single handedly. In his home turf, he's seen as a just ruler with a mind for growth and the best intention for his people at heart."

"Seriously?" Aki raised her froggy eye ridge. "I find that hard to believe. I mean... the first time we actually saw this city it was surrounded by refugees... which I'm sure you remember, you being one of them and all. After that, there's that plague and the quarantined zone, and you definitely don't need me to tell you how big a problem criminal activities or civic unrest are in this city."

She was absolutely right, of course. This city was a long way away from how it should have been had Miyamoto's several times over great grandson had acted as the ruler he was touted to be, but a few of its problems started on their own. He could see other hands here, nudging this point and that point for things to fall into perfect alignment.

"Isn't it curious..." He said, slowly, lacing his words with obvious suggestion. "... that all of the problems you just said, except for one, were actually orchestrated by Nezumi for the last eight years?"

Aki's mouth dropped again, and this time it stayed wide open for a full minute as she blinked, trying to work out what he just said.

"You mean..."

"Well look at it... we know the plague is a side effect of the drug Nezumi was selling, and we know the business plan is faulty to an illogical degree. We also know that Nezumi owns half of Kokkyo police department for all intents and purposes, thus letting the criminals run unchecked in Kokkyo's underbelly. Then... there is this..." He fished out a roll with a bright red seal on it from the document pile and shook it open.

"You can try reading it all." He said. "But I will make it short for you. This is a report of Kokkyo's standing army status and governmental operations to Nezumi... penned by one of the four great generals of Kokkyo. The very four that answer only to Sei-Taishogun Tsuki no Miyamoto himself. And he is not writing as a the hidden leader of Nezumi or even as an equal partner. He is writing... as a paid subordinate."

He held the scroll with one hand and used his other hand to point out what looked to be a blueprint of a part of the wall rendered in blue ink. "Defense formations and seal keys." Then to a group of numbers and dates "Border patrol schedules". Then to a wall of text near the middle. "The rundown of state meetings of the Sei-Taishogun and the civil representatives."

He rolled the scroll closed, tied it with the attached red rope, and set it aside. "Do you know what this means?" He asked. He could see that he'd shaken up Aki. Perhaps for the first time she was comprehending the twisted nature of humans and their relations to each other.

"It means we may have gotten in over our heads?" She said finally. "I don't know. But I can guess. I mean... it's blurry but I can see where you are heading."

He shrugged. He did not find this reaction unexpected. "Have we gotten in over our heads? I don't know. I'm on the fence about it. But I can make the picture clearer to you." Then he got back to the map on the table.

"So we agree now that there is a history and a certain... rivalry between Kokkyo ruled by the Miyamoto line and the capital Nichiyo-shi ruled by the daimyo line. Every year that goes past is another year Kokkyo stays as a thorn and a possible threat to the throne of Fire. Whether or not Kokkyo can win against Nichiyo-shi in an out war is still a toss-up, but we know for certain that if Tsuki no Miyamoto wants to separate from Hi no Kuni and establish an independent nation, he certainly has all the means to do so. And if one of the four city state can do this..."

"... so can the others," said Aki.

"That's right. So the daimyo does have motivation to bring down one of his own vassals, Kokkyo most of all as an example to others. The question is... how?"

"Not by a royal decree I take it?"

"Not by a long shot." He nodded. "Royal decrees are only good if you have the strength to back them up. Three hundred years ago when Kokkyo was still in its fledgling state, I think it would have been of some use, but the daimyo of that time chose not to use it. You can say that his own subtlety and cleverness got the best of him."

"Plus, it would have looked bad for the emperor of the nation to use his all just to bring a recalcitrant noble line and his shanty town back to heel, wouldn't it?" Aki added. "But now that the little fledging is all grown up, suddenly it becomes too much for them to handle head-on."

"You're catching up." He smiled. Having worked with courtiers and royalties for half of his life, he knew how much they valued their image and their illusions of power. It may sound ridiculous to a tactician or a ninja, but for the court to come out and admit it considered a single noble line as a threat would have devalued them in the eyes of other nations and decrease the trust of other vassals in them. A foolish practice but one that had persisted through the ages.

"Even a royal decree backed up by an army now will still be too risky for the daimyo. Because of how the field is laid out..." He gestured between the four city states and the capital. "... even though Kokkyo is of a class of its own, it's still considered on the same level as the other three states. To the normal people unaware of the history and backroom politics behind the formation of Kokkyo and the four cities boundary line, Kokkyo is innocent. Tsuki no Miyamoto has not done anything to offend the crown. He is, without a doubt, a loyal and peerless vassal, the ideal of how a Sei-Taishogun should be. For the crown right now to declare war on him for no reason... or even with made-up reasons... would divide the citizens of the country."

He filled the field with pawns, dividing them between Kokkyo and the capital Nichiyo-shi.

"Kokkyo has buried itself too deep into the economical pulse of the country and other neighboring countries. Too many people have a share in Kokkyo's honey pot for it to be destroyed willy-nilly like that. Other nobles with trade agreements with Kokkyo. Powerful guides and ultra-rich merchants. People who have the power to change the field of war should one ever happen. The worst case scenario is that an ill-timed royal decree will incite civil uprising and may even push Kokkyo to merge with a rival neighbor, thus bringing the Kokkyo threat to an even higher level."

He picked up the knife again, and over the Northwest border, he carved 'Tsuchi no Kuni'. The Land of Earth, a great rival of Hi no Kuni.

"Moreover, it would send a message to the other three city states that the crown considers them threats that should be disposed of. After all, Kokkyo was not at fault and it's one of the four. If the crown can turn against Kokkyo without clear provocation, then what are the chances that it won't also turn against the remaining three?"

"Surely they would not risk war with the crown on simple paranoia?" Aki said, clearly getting his drift.

"I don't think they would, not right away anyway. What they would do is lie in wait and build up their own war potential until the point when they too become threats on the same level Kokkyo was. Never forget that they serve as the buffer between the inner land and rival countries. If this buffer is removed... or, say... if the buffer suddenly decides to switch to the other side, what position will the crown be in then? "

"Defenseless and surrounded by enemies."

"Damn right."

"Well, what a mess the daimyo is in then."

"Yep. You can call this a classic case of one's own scheme coming back to bite one in the behind. If the daimyo of three hundred years past had not enacted his own move and created the four cities barrier system we have now, the crown would not have found itself in this sticky situation."

"Well... to be fair, three hundred years ago it sounded like a good plan. Damn devious if you ask me. Had Miyamoto's great great great great grandpapa been the warmonger the daimyo thought he was, his plan would have worked."

"But it didn't, and now it only serves to deepen the danger. Such is the nature of human politics. A trap within another trap. Plots interweaving plots. Alliances changing. The king and his horse switching places at a moment's notice. It is a dangerous game with a most seductive prize."

He plucked the queen piece from Nichiyo-shi and set her down in the middle of Hi no Kuni.

"Power."

Aki sighed. "If only humans loved flies like us." She said, drooling a bit from her mouth. "Then everyone would just want flies. The human world would be a much simpler place filled with the glory of flies and other delicious bugs!"

He laughed, loud and long. He couldn't say he didn't think the same, a long... long... time ago. The world would have indeed been a much simpler place, but now was not the time for wishful thinking.

"Well... maybe..." He said finally. "But since humans don't eat flies this is what we have to contend with." Then he wiped the smile off his face and got back on track. "So now that you know the basis of the situation we are in, I can begin my explanation on where and how Nezumi fits into this web."

Aki put a bracing expression on her face and said, "Okay. Hit me."

A smile bent the corner of his mouth at Aki's statement as he carried on. "So... how to bring down Kokkyo without civil wars erupting within the country? This is the question the current daimyo had to deal with. To answer this question, you have to understand the basis of Kokkyo's strengths, and then break them one by one."

He pointed with his knife, going over the circles of Kokkyo "The wall of Kokkyo, the last and greatest defense line. It is unbreachable, even with the ongoing reports from the traitor general to Nezumi and eventually to the daimyo's hand. As long as the city has an adequate stockpile of foods and essential supplies, they are also impervious to sieges. Any siege with a hope to even faze Kokkyo would last not months but years."

Then he moved in deeper, over the pawn pieces. "The people of Kokkyo, rich and powerful in their own rights. Merchants, nobles, guidesmen, crafters, innovators. These are the people who built the foundation of Kokkyo's ever growing power and economy and put it on the front line of technological development."

Then finally, the Imawaka mask at the heart of Kokkyo. "Sei-Taishogun Tsuki no Miyamoto, the symbol of hope and trust of Kokkyians and the face of Kokkyo itself."

He made a circle, indicating all three of the pieces. "These are the pillars of Kokkyo's strength. It is them that made this city into not only a simple city but an idea—a dream of riches, happiness, and freedom regardless of one's origin... as the founder of Kokkyo, the Miyamoto great grandpa, did. To bring this city to the ground, the daimyo must break all three. He cannot simply invade this city and chain its ruler. No, he must shatter the Kokkyian dream itself."

Aki whistled, "Damn, talk about an impossible mission."

"It's not impossible. It simply requires a very thorough and very long plan is all. The way I see it, the daimyo is on the way to success."

He pointed at the pawns with the tip of his knife. "These are the weakest link. They are numerous in number but fickle. The drugs, the plagues, the criminals, the crippling corruption of the system brought about by Nezumi's money. It took years but their faith waned. You have seen the people on the streets of Kokkyo, the outers looking in with jealousy and spite and nothing to their name but inescapable poverty. The inners hoarding their wealth, looking out in fear and disgust. It is so so easy to break them. All it needs is time and money."

Then he moved out, his blade hovering over the wall of Kokkyo. "This... is not so easy. It cannot be brought down in the usual sense of the word. It requires a far more delicate hand. But a wall no matter how great is still just a wall. And what is the purpose of one if not for protecting the people within it? The question then is not, _how do we breach the wall?_ but rather _how do we render the wall of Kokkyo a moot point?_"

He moved his knife again, this time drawing little square shapes right outside Kokkkyo. "There is one peculiar thing about Kokkyo. And that is... it does not produce enough food to feed its own people. There are a handful of affiliated farms surrounding the city. These provide roughly only twenty percent of Kokkyo food supply. The rest is imported from various trade routes."

He carved trade routes going from Kokkyo to the Land of Rice, to Wind, to Earth.

"Now isn't that just wonderful? A city of nine million people depending almost completely on far-off farms to fill their plates every day. Normally, Kokkyo being a trade center is a strong point, but for this one, it creates a glaring weakness. Because trade is their specialty, the cost for importing food into Kokkyo is incredibly cheap, and with the economy of scale of feeding nine million people bringing the price per unit down even further, majority of food products are actually cheaper imported than produced within the city. This is the single reason as to why only a handful of farms managed to survive in the surrounding zone whereas the three main trade routes for food flourished. Quite obviously, in war time, these routes will be the first one to be wiped out, bringing food supply to a fifth of the peacetime amount."

He cut the three supply routes with a swipe.

"Have you ever seen a city in riot for food before, Aki? It's a terrible sight. All those people, reduced to their most basic, most primal of needs. The bone deep hunger turns them to animals. What use is the wall when the very people it's protecting are tearing themselves apart?"

"I can't believe they would leave such an obvious weak point out in the open like that? Shouldn't they have something for that situation? Some preparations maybe? "

"They do... did actually." He scrawled the words 'supply silos' in curves within the circles. "Contingency city and public safety planning assigned several tonnes of rice and dried food to storage every year for moments like this. These supply silos are all equipped with top of the line preservator machines and stasis seals. Also, along the perimeter of the coast are several underground water treatment and detoxification plants. A siege would have to last for at least a decade for Kokkians to feel the first hunger pang."

He plunged his free hand into the document pile, rummaged around a little before pulling out a piece of parchment. He held it in front of Aki.

"It's just too bad that public safety department recently discovered that an unidentified official in their chain of commands embezzled half of the supply silos and contaminated the other half. Strange target for embezzling don't you agree? Sure the value of a several decades worth of food is large, but one would think there are many easier and more convenient targets to embezzle if one can bypass the kind of high security such as the ones protecting the supply points."

"Let me guess, half of those food is in Nezumi's hand right now?"

"They were, up until a month ago. They were sold to several underground merchants and the profits put back to reinvestment in Nezumi's operations. Of course, these supply can be restocked with time, but just as luck would have it the three trade routes have been seeing less and less traffic due to highway robbers. Some even reported being harassed by Uchiha."

"Now that sounds awfully concerted."

"Yes, it does. The Uchiha are professional mercenaries, in a way of speaking. I find it hard to believe they would have the need or personal reasons to target mercantile roads on their own. They would only do that as part of a plan."

He crossed out the word 'supply silos', effectively taking out of the picture. "They are trying to restock their supply as we speak. But replacing several decades worth of food stockpile is an incredibly slow process, especially now that fewer shipments are coming into Kokkyo. Now this next part..."

He tapped the word Amegakure over the border. "... I only have rumors, but they fit with the scheme. Words are that the Ame tribes have found a leader to unify them all and there is a very real danger of an Ame invasion soon."

That stopped Aki short. "What's that gotta do with this? Don't mind me saying this but compared to what I've been hearing from you in the last hour, an invasion from the neighboring region sounds almost quaint? Kokkyo has dealt with Ame for three hundred years right? It should be no news to them by now."

"It would have been nothing new..." Said Naruto in reply. "... had something not changed. The thing about Ame is that they have never struck Kokkyo with their full strength."

He circled the word Amegakure on the map, then carved out offshoots from it. "As it is now, Ame is simply the name of the land where a great number of warring tribes dwell. In my time, the majority of these tribes were unified into a single small but powerful village. The small dissenting minority was wiped out. But in this time period, it looks like they have yet to go through this unification. My guess is, the unification of Ame only takes place well into the Ninja era, past the creation of Konoha."

He omitted the fact that the man who would later on bring unity to all of Ame was actually just a little boy sleeping in Tonari Ryokan now. The same one who blushed like boiled beet roots when he tried to complement Naruto's appearance this very morning. Such irony one encountered in the flow of history. Who would have thought the great unifier and tyrannical dictator of Ame, the terrifying sage of Salamander, apparently was both a sucker for and sucked at rock-paper-scissor contests for pancakes?

… pancakes made from senchakra, he reminded himself, smiling at the thought. He could think of far worse things to do with his power.

"In the past, there was little to no lasting alliances between any of these tribes. Despite sharing the same land and name, they constantly waged wars and raided each other and neighboring regions. This is the single reason why it is so hard to bring them to heel—because they simply do not have a central body of rulers. Going deep into Ame to hunt the leaders of each tribes down one by one would be both too costly and risky an operation for any one country to partake in alone. So up until now, Kokkyo has chosen a largely defensive approach against the Ame raiders. They only patrolled along the routes to ensure protection for their own people. They knew the minor tribes weren't interested in simple lands."

"But that has now changed."

"It has." He confirmed. "Instead of raids from a single tribe, now they have to deal with an all-out assault from a unified people." He drew an even bigger circle, grouping all the tribes together before drawing a large arrow going from Ame to Hi no Kuni, directly on the collision path with Kokkyo.

"Are they dangerous?" Aki asked, pawing with her foot at the arrow going in.

"My opinion? Not really. Though they are now in greater number and perhaps possessing higher ambition than simple robberies, they are still an unruly, undisciplined mass made up of people who have little to no experience in fighting in groups and in all-out warfare, not to mention they completely lack the war tools for drawn-out battles and siege maneuvers. Against the standing army or Kokkyo, under the leadership of Sei-Taishogun Tsuki no Miyamoto, I'd bet all my money on Kokkyo. However..."

He pulled out the letter with the Uchiha insignia. The entire letter was written in indecipherable ciphers. However, one word was left without a cipher version of its own. And that word was...

"Ame...!" Aki read it out loud.

He nodded, pocketing the letter. "That's what worries me more than anything." He took the tip of his knife to the table surface, letting it sink into the wood, then slowly, and with utmost concentration, etched the Uchiha symbol right underneath the name of Amegakure. "In my timeline, it is years before the unification of and creation of Amegakure as a country and ninja village. But now, years before it's supposed to happen, I'm hearing about this movement. And this letter. I can't help but think it is the Uchiha hand that brought forth this change. Uchiha usually do not concern themselves with these small tribes, but if they act as an endorser for a chosen leader to bring about the unification of Ame under someone else's order, if they then aid this newly formed country in its first war against Kokkyo..."

"... now that's a scary thought." Aki muttered. "With the food supply situation in Kokkyo, this can become a disaster for Kokkyo."

"Exactly." He concurred. "The ruling elite of Kokkyo must know this. They know the food supply situation and the rumors of a unified Ame backed by Uchiha power. That's why the activity level of the army is going off the chart right now. They are preparing for all out war. They understand that their chance is worst in a siege situation. If one is allowed to occur, then Kokkyo—under the combined effect of the plague, starvation, civic unrest, and all supply and trade routes being cut off due to war on their home turf... will boil itself out... in which case, the wall of Kokkyo is absolutely useless."

"Then they have no choice but to fight!" Said Aki, quickly following his line of reasoning.

"... and to win on open ground... which they won't, because at least a quarter of their army has already turned traitors." He gestured at the report from the traitor general. "Again... this is a situation in which a wall, no matter how great is ultimately pointless..."

He moved in onto the wall of Kokkyo and with several slashes, erased it from the game. "... and **this** is how you bring down an unbreachable wall."

"... Shit..." Said Aki, her eyes wide with shock and wonder. Despite being explained to the minute details the trap woven by the daimyo, the complexity and subtlety of the trap laid by the daimyo still shocked her to the core. He let her have a minute to fully digest this new information before turning to the last pillar of Kokkyo's strength, the Imawaka mask representing the young Sei-Taishogun of Kokkyo.

"And here we come to him at last, Sei-Taishogun Tsuki no Miyamoto, the symbol of hope and trust for his people. A fair ruler, and a peerless leader." He touched the mask with his fingers. It felt cool and smooth under his hand.

"With his city in tatters from the plague, the refugees, the rampant drugs and criminals, and war knocking on his door, he is hard-pressed to prove himself a fitting leader to his people. But with both the damaged trust and the dwindling wealth of Kokkians, the traitors sleeping deep within his court, and the greatest defense line of his home rendered moot, it is so very easy to bring him down. It is, after all, human's nature to distrust leadership figures. Regardless of whether he decides to hold the siege and pray that his new food silos hold out longer than the enemy army, or bring his own force out in all-out war, his fate is already sealed."

He knocked the bishop piece by flicking the butt of the knife against it, sending it rolling on the table surface. "His fall will be brought about either by a riot of his own people, or by an inescapable defeat against the Ame force. In both cases, he will lose whatever remains of his people's trust in him and his capability as their leader."

He held out his knife eye level right above the Imawaka mask, looking Aki in the eye. He had all her attention on him he saw.

"You know what will come next, don't you?"

She nodded silently, too breathless for an answer.

"What comes next will be the royal army, arriving in the scene following in the wake of Tsuki no Miyamoto's crushing defeat at what appears to be a primitive baby army to all of his peers. They will come not as conqueror but as the liberating hand of a daimyo, rescuing the people of Kokkyo from the Ame barbarians... and as the bearer of royal judgement upon the Miyamoto line."

He turned the knife slowly, moving it from its horizontal position to a perfect vertical right above the Imawaka mask, gleaming steel tip down. Impending and inescapable fate.

"Now... is the culmination of the daimyo's plan, the zenith of his cunning and patience. Now is the moment the years long trap bears fruits. All the requirements have been met, the positions reversed. Now it is Miyamoto who is the sinner, and the daimyo the righteous and fair ruler with only the best wishes of his people at heart. It is under Miyamoto's incompetent hands that the once beautiful and powerful Kokkyo is reduced to almost nothing. It is under his leadership that the force of Hi no Kuni suffer a crushing defeat against a baby army aided by ninja scum. An inept leader is one that cannot be allowed to live. Now... justice is in the daimyo's hand. The punishment is legitimate, the royal decree backed by all those who felt wronged and those who have lost their all in the fall of Kokkyo. Now he will have the right to pass his sentence on Tsuki no Miyamoto and the rest of the Miyamoto line, and without fail..."

The knife came down from above, touching, then passing by the Imawaka mask to impale the table surface below, its descent as sweet and clean as a katakana in the dark. With a dry, brittle crack, the mask broke in halves, each piece flying to opposite directions.

"... without fail, he will erase everything of the Miyamoto line from existence."

In the wake of all this, silence followed. He sat back, poured himself another glass and drank away the patchiness in his throat. Then he waited for Aki to finally swallow everything.

It was shocking he knew. The entire thing, the scope and depth of the trap. Its absolute ruthlessness and the underlying complete understanding of man's dark desires that lay at its base. If his Fuin clone had not done the digesting for him for the whole day before, he would have been in the same position as her.

Five minutes passed, then finally she said. "We have... we have come in over our heads, haven't we?" Her voice shook badly. She put her finned hands together, wringing them.

He shrugged. "I'm still on the fence about it."

She turned up and down, a troubled expression on her face. She walked around the map, studying the pieces. "What I still don't get..." She said, a tiny tinge of denial still clinging to her voice. "... is how the daimyo is not worried at all about this whole plan. What he is doing is essentially striking at his own force! What would he do if an enemy country attacks now? He's leaving his flank right open. And what after Kokkyo? Will he do the same to the other three cities? I don't understand how he profits from this. He's essentially cutting his own arms and legs off!"

He nodded. He well-understood Aki's concerns. If he weren't a shinobi he would have questioned the same thing, but because he was a shinobi, he understood more than anyone the changing dynamics of ninja and samurai in the current of history.

"The short answer is that he doesn't care Aki." He said, making a gesture with his hand."He neither cares for nor needs the samurai army. He hasn't needed them for a good while now. He has something to replace samurai."

He picked up the knife again from the ruins of map-Kokkyo, and with a few quick strokes, etched out two figures under the capital Nichiyo-shi.

The clan symbol of Uchiha and Senju.

A flash of realization zipped through Aki's expression.

"You understand now? He is tired of samurai. He is tired of their flashy way and how the public adore them. They are too powerful to be the obedient tools that he wanted. The more useful they are, the more dangerous they become. The ninja, on the other hand, are much more obedient servants. Ninja will do anything without a samurai's qualms and for a fraction of the price. It is our way, and for this reason we stand in the dark, away from the political arena and away from ever becoming a direct political threat to the throne."

"I... I see..."

"It takes something to accept that. Don't be hard on yourself." He touched the little frog on her head. The poison on her skin sizzled under his hand, but his demon-made body was too strong to feel anything more than a feather light tickle. "What you are witnessing is the end of the samurai era and the beginning of the ninja era. The fall of Kokkyo heralds the obsoletion of samurai power within the court of the great five nations. Before long, with the creation of the first hidden village and the development of ninja organizations into forces worthy of world-scale warfare, the world nations will begin to replace their samurais with ninja counterparts. In my time, samurais were reduced to a tiny militaristic state, a shell of their former power and splendor."

It took another minute for her this time, but when she spoke, she was already much calmer. "So... what do we do? Where do we fit in?"

He understood the entirety of her question without her elaborating on it. What should they do? Should they leave? Or should they stay? If he chose to stay, they would soon be caught in this trap and in the midst of a war between forces to large for him to fend off alone.

If he were working solo, he would have no problem. But the children...

… On the other hand, this was likely to be his best lead on the Uchiha clan in a long time. He had no delusions over the fact that once he left Kokkyo he would have lost much if not almost all of the power of Nezumi. The daimyo had simply wanted a tool to an end, and so designed Nezumi as an intrinsically faulty organization. It was never meant to survive past the fall of Kokkyo to give its maker even more trouble.

He walked around the table, studying the field of the game. Slowly, a path formed in his head. It was risky, but he was not without fallbacks. He would still be able to protect the children while following this Uchiha lead to the max.

"I'm not abandoning this Uchiha trail so easily." He declared. "This... this must be how the daimyo of three hundred years past felt... this feeling... like he's invincible as he watched everything falling exactly as he planned." His hand hovered above the map.

"Remember this Aki. Three hundred years ago, the daimyo had an almost foolproof plan, but that failed on a simple misjudgement of character. Remember, nothing is ever definite in this game of politics and power. Nothing is ever guaranteed. All it takes to upset this delicate balance is a single tiny disruption in just the right place...

"… and I... will be this disruption. The one who sees the game for what it is, will be able to influence the outcome. I will stay and be the ghost in the system. I will infiltrate the court of Kokkyo and pull whatever strings that need to be pulled to turn this around. I will not let this city fall so easily."

Not now at least, not while his children walked its streets and lived in its houses. Just as he said this, he saw the gleam of an off white mask within the pile of colorfully painted Noh visages. He picked it up.

It was an unfinished piece. The bones had been carved, but there was nothing on the face except for the empty eye and nose sockets. A blank. A non-entity. A ghost. How fitting. He'd need a mask soon, for his infiltration into Kokkyo's seat of power and for his future... dalliances... with Sei-Taishogun Tsuki no Miyamoto.

"I will be..." He said finally, feeling his choice crystallized and his path set. He put the mask on, felt it fit the curves of his face to the most minute of places.

"... the game changer."

* * *

**End Chapter 9**

* * *

1/ Are you as excited as I am? With this chapter we officially enter the meat of arc 2 – part 2: Kiiroi Kami, detailing Naruto's infiltration into the political world of Hi no Kuni, taking up the post as the fourth general, the most newest and most mysterious general over-seeing the creation of the first anti-nin brigade, directly under Sei-Taishogun Tsuki no Miyamoto. This part will end after several chapters when Naruto successfully executes a kidnapping attempt on a high-ranking Uchiha in the middle of enemy's camp, thus gaining insider intel of the Uchiha clan (and starting arc 2 – part 3 which centers on Naruto's infiltration into the Uchiha clan)

Lots of world building, politics, court intrigue, assassination attempts, crossdressing, and war tactics in these parts.

Also, in this part (Kiiroi Kami), there will be a minor one-sided romance from one of the characters for Naruto (under an alias at the time). The romance will be adult… and by adult, I don't mean the XXX kind. I just absolutely hate it that the word adult to some people just mean acting out on their baser instincts and other low-brow shenanigans. On an off-side note, can you guess who's it going to be? *insert troll face here*

2/ What a bit of political explaining in this part. The entire 'trap' was drafted and finetuned by me over a period of three weeks in the first year I started to write Tis Femina. Now finally I get it to put it to words in this chapter. It's a bit of a doozy and I tried my best to not make it 'too heavy' for the normal readers here. Not sure whether I succeeded or not since the political world for this story is naturally complicated. I guess I can only hope. I welcome and and all reviews/asks to me discussing the fine point of the 'trap' in this chapter. I'm sure there is a hole somewhere in there that I was not able to plug (as all stories are) despite the fact that I spent a good bit of thoughts and preparations on this single part of the story. I will be very happy to discuss all you want about it.

3/ Now wouldn't you like the same world building and court politics in my promised future **Shingeki no Kyojin/ Attack on Titan**? I know I am. I just can't wait to sink my claws into that world.

4/ This part is written on the behalf of Rosetta at Home. It has nothing to do with my stories or my writings or even myself. It is simply a plea for anyone who's willing to pay a little attention to the welfare of the community, a little cyber volunteer work, if you will (So you don't have to read it if you're not interested. But please, it only takes five minutes, and I'm pretty sure you've already spent hours reading what I write so what's five more minutes?).

Donate your computer processing power to Rosetta at Home!

Rosetta at Home: is a distributed computing project to solve the mystery of how the human protein strings fold, and from there discover the key to curing all diseases, including AIDS, cancer, flu, autoimmune disorders.

In layman's terms, no supercomputer is up to the task of calculating all the possible ways a human protein strings can fold into itself (like the ways a shoestring dropping into a carton box would look like, the possibilities are endless), so this project has to be done communally by a large group of computers. Rosetta at Home is a software that only works when your computer is idle or is using a very small percentage of the processing power (e.g. when you go to class and forget to turn down your laptop, when you fall asleep while writing your midterm essays, while you are reading the news from your office computer, etc...) to compute protein folding and find the 'golden folds'.

This project has gone on for some years now, organized by Baker Laboratory of the University of Washington. I got into it when a friend introduced it to me partly because I felt this was a very small thing I could do (I figure if my laptop can run Mass Effect 3 on high quality then Rosetta should be no big deal) that would help a lot of people, and partly because someone dear to me was hanging on to her life. My little sister who has a severe case of Lupus, an autoimmune disorder. I've been crunching the program for some months now and though I didn't let myself hope that I would see the day when my sister benefits from the fruits of Rosetta, only that perhaps other people later on could benefit from it (Fyi, one out of ten Americans run the risk of having lupus).

But it actually happened. A few days ago, the team started on the designing process of proteins that are meant as cures for a number of diseases, autoimmune disorders among them.

So there, that's the reason as to why I'm writing this to you now. If you have a loved one afflicted with diseases with no cure, if you yourself are afflicted, if you have seen other afflicted people and are touched, donate your computer processing power to Rosetta.

They don't ask you to do anything great. They don't ask you for your time. They don't ask you for your money. They simply ask for the time that you would have thrown away anyway on your computer. That's all. It is a very simple act that would save a lot of people.

The program is small, with no bugs nor trojans, no advertising, no phishing, no unwanted proposition for sibling programs, no credit card number required, no hidden deal. The only problem I've ever had with it is that sometimes it becomes a little overzealous and cause my laptop to slow down. A bit of tweaking around, limiting the amount of CPU usage it can access should solve this problem.

Currently, there are around 350,000 computers with Rosetta installed. Honestly speaking, I've seen indie shops with more followers on facebook and twitter than that (fyi, there are more people reading my writings than that too). The reason for its unpopularity is that the people who run Rosetta...

…. are complete dumbasses when it comes to PR. (If you are a member of the Rosetta team reading this, I mean it, guys!)

They may be brilliants doctors and scientists whose IQ probably doubles mine, but when it came to putting together an explanation or a presentation for their brain baby, they …

…. epic failed...

Yes, they are your typical socially hopeless people of science. Reading their explanations about the project is like reading a legal treaty written in Sur'keshian (if you don't know what Sur'keshian is, it's the language of the planet Sur'kesh, Pranas System, Annos Basin, Milky way, home to the Salarians, a species of amphibian aliens who are too smart for their own good but unfortunately only lives up to 40 years).

Their latest presentation clip is even worse. I think I fell asleep in the first minute. I'm not sure. My brain was a bit hazy at the time.

Anyway, my point is: please go check them out, and give them a chance. I'm throwing them some free PR, and they sure can use it.

And if you, the one reading this, are a member of the Rosetta team, tell your fellow Salarians disguised as humans to hire a human PR major to help out, maybe even hoodwink them into working for you for free. I'm sure your colossus IQ point can think of something. But get professional help...

…. seriously!


	12. I-1 From the other cliff of the abyss

Disclaimer: I don't own anything... except for the plot of this chapter (...and entire story), as well as the character interpretation and development therein. Also, parts of Sakura's dialogue is taken directly from the first volume of Naruto. A two sentence quote is taken from Kushiel by Jacqueline Carey.

Beta: Michelle T.

_**Interlude 1:**__** From the other cliff of the Abyss (a.k.a how canon!Naruto grew into TF!Naruto)**_

* * *

"_... for even in the depths of hell, we shall have the eyes of angels on us..."_

* * *

A long, long time ago in a far, far away land, there lived a little boy in a ninja village. His birth foretold the onset of the end, and heralded by tragedy.

A vessel meant to contain evil, fated for sorrow, but born out of love. His birth and life was the untold half of the legend. In his heart was jailed the beast of nine tails, and he was called...

"Naruto! Move your ass! I want to sit on the other side of you!"

That was what she always said... yelled... to his face when they were kids. Every morning, every class, without fail, like clockwork, like a courtyard game for children. She wanted to sit next to Sasuke, and he, knowing exactly what she wanted, always went for that seat... just so she would have a reason to look him in the face and called him an ass, just so he could hear her talking to him. She had little reason to do so outside of it. Not in those first few years anyway. So, without fail, every morning, every class of his academy days, he came early and sat next to Sasuke Uchiha and waited for her to come in through the door with sunlight on her back and harsh words on her lips.

He loved her before he even knew what love was.

Sakura Haruno was her name. They met for the first time at five years old. She didn't remember, but he did. He saw her sitting alone in the woods, by the river, crying, and just then it occurred to his five years old mind that he wasn't the only child out there who yearned for something other than himself, who yearned to be accepted, acknowledged. A kindred soul, whether she knew it or not.

Could five years old boys fall in love? Was it love? Or was it simple infatuation meant to burn out once the fancy passed? The fallacy of youth and minds too young to comprehend the depth and madness of the heart. Maybe. Maybe not. He didn't know. No one ever taught him about love or how to love or be loved. He had no parents to learn from, so he made by in stumbles and in falls, learning through pain and mistakes. A blind creature trying to claw its way through shadow to the light.

"All I want is... for you to acknowledge me." She told him... Sasuke... him disguised as Sasuke. They sat on the bench right in the premises of the Ninja Academy. Sasuke tied up and ball-gagged in a corner while he wore Sasuke's face to sit next to the girl he loved. Then she said to his face that he didn't know her at all. It would be years until she knew how wrong she was, because he did_ know_ her... so much more than she could ever understand. But then she was a kid, and kids did stupid things all the time.

It stung to hear that, because that was exactly what he wanted to tell her... what he wanted from her, the same thing she wanted from Sasuke.

Please, please acknowledge me.

She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen... but also the most terrible thing. He hated her for what she did to him, but his heart didn't change. It never would.

Twelve years old, he found out the great secret that founded his life. He was a vessel meant to contain evil. The jailor of a demon. Heartbroken for the first time, but also made his first real friend. He saw Iruka to his grave, and amongst the countless unmarked graves of war, he made sure his first teacher, mentor, brother, and friend would always be remembered for as long as he lived.

Twelve years old, and he took the first step into the world of Shinobi. Shadows and daggers and lies and half-truths. A world shaded in gray. But he was a child, and children can only comprehend things in absolute black or white.

Whereas he saw a bright future with glory and acceptance and princesses to save, reality was all about killing and lies and deceit and a village founded upon a foundation made up of secrets.

Twelve years old, he saw his Hokage die. No. Not Hokage. His grandfather figure. His idol and the goal of his aspiration. He started to understand that even powerful men can fail, can die. Before that, he thought the Hokage invincible. As he stood in a sea of black and listened to the funeral rite and the raindrops falling down on his face, he began down the path to understanding how frail, how powerless men were against the tides of history.

Twelve years old, he lost a best friend and brother, made a promise he would give his life to keep.

Twelve years old, he left the place that saw his birth and fostered him in its bosoms for twelve years to go on a journey. He wanted to be stronger. He would be stronger. He had someone to protect now, and he would not end up like the Hokage that now lay lifeless under the earth.

He found out he never really understood the definition of power. What was power? The ability to mow down enemies like electric grass mowers on a field of wild weeds? The ability to protect the people he loved? The ability to change the world? To better it? The first one he was sure he was going down the right path. The other two eluded him still. The day he lost Neji during the ensuing Fourth Shinobi world war, his understanding of how fallible men were sunk in deeper, but time would prove that it was still too shallow.

Fifteen years old, he went home. He thought he was ready. It turned out that he was not. War found him. No... war caught up with him. His life had started with war, had always been conducted in war. He just never knew it till then.

The rest was history. Akatsuki. Itachi Uchiha. Chasing after Sasuke and realizing how much he had changed and how much he hadn't. Pain and Yahiko and Konan. It shook him how much he had in common with Pain. It was also the first time he couldn't tell whether his enemy was truly an enemy. If things in his life didn't happen the way they did, could he have turned out like Nagato? Maybe. He stood on the precipice, the line between light and dark and felt so very keenly the pull of the abyss on him. One slip was all it took. He understood it better than anyone.

His world blurred in shades of grey. His village lay in tatters. Desperate people could be... beastly. He understood that they tried to be better, but sometime better didn't cut it.

Sakura. Sakura. Sakura. His pillar of strength and peace amidst a time of chaos. She had changed too, in a way he had not expected... but had somehow always known. In the place of a little girl now stood a maturing young woman and together they shared this journey. His love for her aged like wine, gaining depth and richness and growing still and pure as it peaked.

Words couldn't describe what he felt for her, so he stayed silent and let his action speak for itself.

The Fourth Shinobi World War erupted. Tobi who was Obito, who was so much like him it felt like looking into a warped mirror every time he faced the man. This is what he would be like if the abyss took him. Then the mastermind behind everything, Madara. If the madness of love ever took human form, it would be him. Madara Uchiha.

The battle was a disaster because of one detractor from history. In another world, it would have been a different war. In this one, the Daimyos, fed up with fickle and uncontrollable shinobi, separated as a third faction. The war they introduced was one of machines and tools of mass murder. Things that could turn simple civilians into ninja killers. The new war formation broke whatever economical and political balance that had held until then. They found themselves fighting for their lives and their foods all at once.

**War**. Death. He once thought it was glory and fame in those days of sunshine, homework and careless childhood. Reality was pain and suffering and horror and amidst it all he could do was endure as best he could.

He could barely remember the day they christened him the new Hokage... Rokudaime Hokage. Tsunade's corpse was still warm when this happened. Once the dream and goal of his life, now it felt shallow and tasteless. He walked to a battered Hokage mountain and stood there looking at his village, his people, thousands of souls who depended on him to guide them, feed them, lead them, protect them.

Being Hokage was neither glory nor acknowledgement. Being Hokage meant duty and sacrifice.

He understood then how naive he had been in his youth. He stood there and cried because he knew perfectly how powerless he was. For the first time ever he understood how Sandaime must have felt. A brittle twig in the face of a storm.

As the sun went down, Sakura found him. She came up from behind and held him in her hands, and then she put her lips to his ears and whispered.

"I love you."

In a world of darkness and despair, a drop of beauty. Love, pure, unadulterated. Its sweetness intensified by a vast backdrop of pain and sorrow. It burned as much as it soothed. But it was all he had, so he took it with both hands.

"Marry me." He told her. "Don't leave me. Stay with me. Forever." The next day they went to the temple together and to an audience of a handful of friends that were still alive, they became husband and wife. They were barely sixteen at the time.

Life went on as it normally did. Battles and strategy and politics. He clung to her as she clung to him. They were each other's safe harbor amidst the storm, intertwined like vines born from one seed. They lost more friends, more allies, but as long as he had her with him, he felt he could take it and keep on going.

In the dark tunnel of time, he hoped for the light at the end.

One day, Hikaru happened. Like all newborns he was red and wrinkly and a baby-shaped organic radio permanently tuned to the screaming channel, but it was love at first sight for both Naruto and Sakura. Hikari's pitch black hair and deep brown eyes set him apart from his father's blond and blue and his mother's pink and green. It was obvious that he was not their blood child.

Children in time of war. A bad idea. He had always wanted a family, but even he understood that now was not the time to bring an innocent soul into this world... not like this... not while he sent twelve years old children to the frontline everyday. He did not make this decision as the Hokage. He made it as a father and a husband. It was a completely selfish decision. He couldn't bear the thought of creating life, seeing it grow up and then sending it into the battlefield. He knew without a doubt that he would love the child completely and unconditionally.

To have this love be taken away from him through war and death... it would break him.

Sakura understood, so she never pushed. They made love. They had sex. Sometimes they fucked like animals when the battle high had yet to subside and they both needed something to cling to to feel alive. But children were never in the equation.

Hikaru took that choice away from them. He came out of his mother Yuhi Kurenai right on time with an attack on their settlement. His mother went from the delivery room to the front line in five minutes flat. No one ordered her to, but the thought of lying in bed while the life of her son was at risk proved unbearable to Kurenai.

That day, it turned out that she really did give her life in exchange for her son. They buried her in the night, and in the morning, they signed the paper to name the boy Hikaru Uzumaki.

What followed next could be describe as momentary peace. The victory proved decisive for them and pushed the enemies back. Long wars generally happened in concentrated spatters over a matter of years. This one was no different. For a few years, an uneasy peace reigned as all sides regrouped and bolstered their force.

In the absence of war, he turned towards his new, unexpected family. These few years were the happiest time of his life. He built a cottage on the side of rebuilt Konoha. Two bedrooms, a nursery, bath house, kitchen and dining room, an attached garden for Sakura's flowers and medicinal herbs, all surrounded by a maze of protective wards. He planted an oak and bullied Yamato into giving it a push in preparation for Hikaru's future treehouse. He made a swing and painted the nursery room in blue and yellow and mythical creatures. He bought parenting for ninja books and then completely chickened out of reading them. He carved wooden toys with his kunai in the off time between sporadic missions. Sakura forced him into learning how to change nappies and what kind of powder milk to get.

He was at once a sixteen years old father and Hokage. He found the first one a lot harder than the second.

In a way, he was relieved that the choice was taken from him, because as much as he feared the pain of loss, he yearned for a family. His life as an orphan shaped him and he could not be anything else but himself.

Sakura went along with his parenting frenzy, smiling and indulgent, and for a while they played at being a normal family. Father and mother and child.

He could not remember ever being happier.

He watched Hikaru over his first birthday, then his second, then his third. He bought a training tricycle and when the boy fell and skinned his knees he thought his heart was going to explode inside his ribcage.

Fourth birthday. Fifth. Hikaru was a loving child, sunny and always smiling. Watching him grow up and discover the world with wonder and innocence felt... miraculous.

He held onto Sakura as they took the boy to the beach one day. He could feel the wheel of life turning. Birth, growth, maturity... He was once a boy, then he was a man, a husband, and a father. The primordial cycle as old as humanity itself.

He had thought he knew how deep love can cut before. He found out then that he knew nothing about it yet.

He looked over at Sakura and in her eyes and her smile he found her empathy. Laughing for the first time in years, he pulled her close and kissed her on the lips, tongue and all, to the background noise of his son yelling.

"Eww! Gross!"

He laughed even louder, pulling the boy close and rubbing his head. All he could think about was his own lonely childhood as an orphan and the empty 90x90 apartment room that didn't deserve to be called home years ago. He made a promise that he would give his son _**everything he never had.**_

.

.

.

It did not last. Of course it wouldn't. Nothing good ever did.

The battle of Cam Rach marked the second phase of the war. He knew this was coming. He might not be a cerebral powerhouse like Shikamaru but he was no fool, and he was no longer the inexperienced child who would rush to battle five years ago. He was a leader now... and a father. That made all the difference in the world.

But it turned out that he had made yet another mistake. His people were prepared. He was not. The years of happiness had dulled him, softened him. While earlier he did not have the knowledge and wisdom that came with age, he was used to battle. At sixteen years old he was a razor, brittle and unrefined yes... but he could cut through anything. His naivety kept him pure and ready for battle, and then he had no one but himself, so nothing kept him and he kept nothing back.

Five years, a hundred and ninety six days and three hours. He put his son to bed and walked to a waiting battlefield. Happiness had dulled him. Memories of home and a child kept him from making the bold decisions, from taking risks.

He screwed up in the tail end of Cam Rach, saw Gamabunta took the shot for him as the world burned down in Amaterasu black fire.

Then he died.

.

.

.

Life returned in an explosion light and pain. He came back in the middle of the life transferring kinjutsu. His wife's soul slipped into him, her life force poured into him, filling a vessel long since cold and empty. He was not yet awake, but he was aware. How could he not when her mind touched him and he saw the rewind of their life... from behind her eyes.

_He saw himself as a boy, five years old and suffering in loneliness. She watched him walk along the river in the rain, clutching her mother's hand as they came home from grocery shopping._

"_See that boy, Sakura?" Mama asked her. _

"_Yes, mama?"_

"_Stay away from him." Mama said. She looked at mama with wide, uncomprehending eyes. But why? She could not turn away from the boy. She watched him sit down by the river bank, clothes soaked wet but he didn't care, and throw rocks into the water. He looked..._

… _like how she felt. Lonely. Isolated. Hungry for something yet unnamed. _

"_Stay away from him you hear?" Mama squeezed her hand, frowning. The umbrella wobbled in her other hand. She heard the note of fear and anger in her mama's voice, but she could not understand why. She threw one last look at the boy over her shoulder as they walked past him. He turned, and their gaze connected for a split of a second, then she broke away. _

"_Yes, mama." She said quietly. She was a good girl, and good girls always did as their mamas said. _

_She put him out of her thoughts, until he refused to be ignored. He was good at it, and as he grew older and they grew closer through shared danger and battle, she found she could ignore him about as well as she could ignore the sun. _

_One day, she came back home from the hospital and told her mother. _

"_Mama, I'm in love." _

_The next day she moved out. It took a lot for parents to admit to losing their child she knew. In time, she could only hope that the pain would lessen and they could heal this rift, but for now, he was all she had so she would take him with both hands. She went to the battered Hokage mountain, found him standing there, bathed in the glow of the descending sun. _

_Where a boy once was, now stood a young man. _

_She walked to him and told him what she had always known since five years old but never dared acknowledge. She loved him. _

_Her parents never came to the wedding. Sakura never looked back. _

_Life went by like a dream. Battle and death, birth and happiness. Together they formed the jigsaw pictures of life. She never told him but amidst the loss, the pain, and the sorrow, she was happy, always happy. She had everything she needed right beside her. _

_So it was not at all a surprise that she set about finding a way to protect the one thing she held dearer than everything else. Seeing Chiyo give her life for Gaara was the start of it all, and in secret Sakura studied the kinjutsu left by the poison master._

_But it wasn't enough. This was the last jutsu to be performed by her. And what then? What after once she was already gone? Who would have his back in battle? Who would heal him and bandage his wounds after? Who would hold him in the night when the pain became unbearable?_

_Chiyo's kinjutsu was not enough. Sakura would fix that. _

_They said Chiyo's kinjutsu was already the zenith of healing jutsu. To tamper with it, to attempt to bring it to a new level was folly... an impossible folly. They said that after Chiyo's death it was lost forever. But they also said that the love of a woman was a terrible force. _

_In five years she studied Chiyo's notes and writings in secret, and from its blueprint she created her masterpiece. _

_That day on the battlefield, she watched him fall from Gamabunta, body lax and unresponsive. Resolution filled her heart. She held him in the aftermath of battle, and gave him life. In a way, it would be as if he ever lost her. _

.

.

.

Memories trickled into his mind. Knowledge of first aid, healing, Iryo Ninjutsu, how to keep himself safe, how to heal his own wounds. This was all to keep him safe, to protect him.

On the line between life and death, he met her for the last time. Chiyo's technique did not allow for this to happen. Sakura's version, on the other hand, allowed for one... and only one message to be left from the giver to the taker.

In a twilight world, life in his front, death at his back, she held him and said.

"Don't follow me."

Then she vanished, the last of her life force absorbed into him. He woke up clutching her cold, dead body. crying and screaming. He lay there until Shikamaru found him and pulled him away from her.

"Stand up. The Hokage is needed."

He broke Shikamaru's nose for that but the next time someone saw him he was the Hokage.

.

.

.

Loss changed him, sharpened him once more. It also unprepared him for his waiting son. He could not bear the thought of looking at Hikaru and trying to explain to him why his mother would never come home and why the world was the way it was. He had done a lot of bad things in the name of the greater good and protecting his people. Hikaru was the only good thing he had ever brought into this world. He could not bear the thought of breaking his innocence.

So he stayed away, and slowly they drifted apart. He busied himself with work, assigned a squad of ANBU to see to Hikaru's care and regularly slept in his office.

For two years he did not go home. It wasn't that he couldn't look at Hikaru's face... but rather he feared the sharp happiness that spiked whenever he saw him... He had broken his promise to his son. He didn't deserve to feel happy.

Perhaps he should have known this lax in security would give him problems later on. Boy, did it...

The how and the why mattered little. Details were painful to go over. The essence of what happened next was that his ANBU squad couldn't stand up to an ambush by Madara Uchiha. Any other ordinary ninja or agent of the Daimyos would have taken the boy hostage right there and then... but not Madara, no.

Madara was a level above the others. He may be mad, he may be twisted, but he had tasted love, and knew the fact that love can cut far deeper than anything else.

"_Let the warriors clamor after gods of blood and thunder. Love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel. It is as inexorable as the tides, and life and death alike follow in its wake."_

A priest once told him that. That day as he received his unconscious son back from a clone of Madara did he come to taste the truth of it.

"One life in exchange for fifty thousands others, I'd say that's a bargain." That was as far the clone got, right before he planted a Rasenshuriken into its face. But that changed nothing. His people were still sick with an unknown disease. The cure was still implanted within his young son, and it could not be taken out except for when the host was dead.

Kill one, to save thousands.

On the day he became Hokage, they had asked him this question. They had asked whether he was enough of a leader to take on this burden of choice. He had said yes. He thought that one would be himself then. If it were him, he would not hesitate to give his life for his people.

… but not his son...

Hikaru slept in the spare bedroom attached to his office as he and his councilors stripped out everything they had in look of a loophole, a way to save both the villagers and Hikaru, harming none but perhaps Madara in the process.

In an ideal world there would have been a way, hard earned, but there would be one. This world was not ideal. It was a cruel world, cruel and absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful.

No way out. No miracle. No Kyuubi chakra or Senju DNA to save the day. Nothing, but the pure and simple question whether he could... or could not. The essence of leadership.

_Being Hokage meant duty and sacrifice. _

When he finally accepted this, only and he and Shikamaru, his trusted friend and confidante... and the only of the original eleven left alive, were left in the room. He sat down in his chair because his legs felt as if they would disintegrate underneath him.

Shikamaru looked him in the eye. "I could... do it for you." He offered. Whatever he saw on Naruto's face drained the blood off his face. He looked away, chagrined.

"My apologies, Hokage. I spoke out of turn." Then he bowed deeply, the bow of a subordinate, not a friend, and walked out of the room.

The next day he took Hikaru to go fishing in a nearby lake. The weather was nice, Hikaru had always wanted to go fishing once and he hadn't spent time with his son in the last two years. So they went. Hikaru was ecstatic. He finally got his father back. Naruto spent the day teaching him how to string his own fishing pole, and which baits to choose. He put the boy in a boat and paddled them out to the middle of the lake. The sun shone down from a brilliant blue skies. The water so clear they could see the bottom of the lake.

In the afternoon, they had grilled fish on the bank. He taught his son how to start a fire and set a grill spoke. They slept under the shade of a tree, the son lying on top the father's chest, and came evening he took him to spring festival in a nearby village. Compared to his time, this festival was a paltry, pitiful thing, but for Hikaru it might as well have been his birthday party and the new year celebration all rolled into one.

Hikaru ate so much cotton candy and drank so much iced slurpee that he got sick on the way home. They stopped by the road so that he could empty his stomach out on a bush, with Naruto stroking his back and doing everything in his power to make him feel better.

Nine PM, time to sleep. He stood before the closed door of the home he built for a family that was no longer there. His son clutched his arm and wobbled sleepily on his feet. The key was cold and heavy in his hand, so instead of inserting it into the lock, he pocketed it and turned to Hikaru.

"Do you want to sleep in the treehouse today?" He asked.

"What? Like a... a sleepover?" Hikaru said sleepily, then his face brightened up. "Can we?"

That wasn't a sleepover, but he didn't correct Hikaru. Growing up as protected and loved as he was, his son had few friends and even fewer who could visit the house. He didn't know lots of things kids his age should. But so far it had kept him alive... so far...

"Sure, we can." He said instead, and hoisted him up his shoulders before making his way up the treehouse. His son's laughter rang in his head.

He lay on the treehouse futon. Kid size, tight fit. He held him and watched the child drift, eyelids growing heavier and heavier.

Hikaru yawned, curled up into his stomach, held him with his tiny seven years old arms. "Good night, papa," then he fell asleep.

Moonlight came in through the open window. Silent night. In the dark, he heard Hikaru's breathing... like the trembling heart of a captive bird.

He could run away. Take his child and go to the end of the world, a place where no one could find them, and live out their life in peace. He may not be powerful enough to stop a war, but he was powerful enough to ensure that no one, neither friends nor foes, would ever be able to find them. Let the world burn. Just go.

But he didn't. He held his son tight, tighter, so tight he felt as if Hikaru's tiny form burned into his own body. He distilled eleven years of experience in the trade of killing into as soft and gentle a death as possible.

"Lord, this one's heart is pure." He prayed. "Lord, set him on the distant shore of the infinite spirit. Lord, guide him to where the traveller never tires, the lover never leaves, the hungry never starve. Guide this one, lord, and he will be a companion to you as he was to me."

His chakra enfolded Hikaru. His reservoir was a mountain compared to a seven years old child's developing puddle. He watched Hikaru's life force being overwhelmed, sputtered, grew still.

Slow and painless death crawled by in hours. As the sun went up and the first light of day touched the floor of the treehouse, he heard his son's breath grow faint, stop.

.

.

.

Two days later, they synthesized the cure. Another week, the villagers were rid off the plague. Madara's ultimatum and the origin of the cure and sickness both were kept secret. They hailed him as a hero and the greatest Hokage in the village history.

He was absent when all this happened. He was numb, a puppet pulled by the string of habits and duty. When the doctors were done, he brought Hikaru home and put him to sleep in the earth right next to his mother. In the garden, he stood and said nothing, simply looked at the two graves amidst a sea of Sakura's flowers. He had no tears left. He tethered upon the precipice where Obito and Nagato fell and became Tobi and Pain.

He finally understood what Madara was trying to say with this... scheme. Madara killed his own brother to protect his clan and was condemned for it. Naruto killed his own son to protect his villagers and was hailed as a hero.

'_You see, for all the things you said and the promises you made, deep down, you are just as much of a monster as I.'_

A monstrous visage looked back at him from the depth of the abyss.

The missive came at night. The Hokage was needed. He nodded wordlessly, then waited for the ANBU to leave.

He burned the house down, then left.

He fell. The abyss took him.

.

.

.

Afterwards, things changed. He became... beastly. He brought war to his enemies. Now he had reverted back to his sixteen years old self, when he had nothing, when nothing kept him, and he kept nothing back.

Before long, he burned down the world to flush out Madara. They faced off, mad beasts snapping at each other's heels. He killed Madara and let the black fire consume him.

As death came to him, finally he could cry. But even then, the only thing he could think of was his son, his wife, the love of his life. All he wanted to do was just to see them one more time and told them how sorry he was, and please, please forgive him.

He died...

… then woke up one hundred years in the past, alive and well, and all alone again.

* * *

Naruto woke mere seconds before the first ray of light peaked the horizon of Kokkyo. The children lying on his chest were still fast asleep. He pulled his hands gently from under Hanzo and wiped away at his wet face.

Why did he dream of the past now of all time? Why he did come here? What would he do? Where would he go?

The answers eluded him, and he lay still and quiet, for a moment feeling weak and lost. He had wanted death but death had refused him, and now here he was, without Sakura and without his son.

Why was he doing this? He had already killed Madara. Vengeance only worked once, but without its drive he didn't know how to go on. Vengeance was all he had now because no matter what he did, nothing would ever bring his wife and son back.

This world could burn for all he cared. A world that required children to die for it was one unworthy of saving. Suicide right now would be so much easier. They would finally... finally be reunited.

Right then, before he pursue this thought further, the children on his chest stirred awake. They yawned and wiped the drool of their cheeks with their chubby little hands, raising sleepy eyes to look at him.

Sunlight came in through the window then, and in the eyes of children, he saw the sun raise.

Something breathless transpired. Something came over him, filled him. Something pure, sacred.

"Urgghh... your breath stinks!" Mo squawked and threw a pillow into Hanzo's face. "Go wash your teeth or something."

"Wuh...?" The boy mumbled, wobbled in his place, before shooting Mo a sleepy-eyed glare. "Dude, it's too early in the morning for this. And it's not like yours don't stink, rat face!" A mischievous look came over Hanzo's face. "And... I heard you fart last night... you know, right after you ate all the boiled beans."

Naruto blinked.

Mo gasped. "You... you take that back! I did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Did too! And..." Hanzo drawled, making faces. "... I also heard that you used to wet your bed."

That was the breaking point. With a battle cry and steaming red face, Mo launched herself at Hanzo and they came tumbling off of Naruto and onto the bedroom floor, squealing and shrieking like fighting kittens.

Naruto sat up on the bed, looking at them go. He was... stupefied? Something tugged at his face, the beginning of a smile. And in his chest a spark.

"I see the kids are awake." Aki grumbled from the hallway, face still sleepy and a pillow grasped tight in her froggy hands. "Hey, can you two take it outside? I'm still trying to sleep here. It's sunday morning for Great Toad's sake."

"I can't go back to sleep, I'm too hungry." Her brother Zaki hopped right in, looking at Naruto. "Are we going to have breakfast any time soon? What are we going to have today anyway? More pancakes?"

His query prompted the children to stop right in the middle of Mo sticking her fingers up Hanzo's nostrils and Hanzo pushing his fist into her mouth. Then Hanzo's stomach rumbled. A loud and growling sound that made the boy blush and lit up an evil little smile on Mo's face. Aki stared at the boy open mouthed while Zaki simply smirked.

"See. Hanzo agreed with me." He said. "We should all go get breakfast now."

The smile on his face went full-blown, and all thoughts of his dream vanished like smoke after the rain. The spark in his chest grew, the beginning of laughter, not yet enough to actually make him laugh, but it stayed there and did not go away.

"Well, today is Sunday." He joined the conversation at last. "Don't you want something special?"

"Special how?" Hanzo asked as he pulled his fist out of Mo's mouth with a wet pop, then proceeded to wipe it on the girl's nightdress,

"I don't know. Maybe eat out? There are many cafes in the inner districts, and I saw this ice cream parlour the other day. I heard they made the best sundae of the city."

"What is ice cream?" "You mean that pretty shop with all the pastel colors and the pretty veranda?" Mo and Hanzo spoke at the same time, the girl so distracted with the mentioning of the colorful parlour to even notice Hanzo wiping the drools on her dress.

Hikaru loved ice cream. Surprisingly, this thought did not feel as painful as it once was.

"Ice cream... is like a little piece of heaven. You think pancake is good? Wait till you try ice cream. It's the sweetest thing. It melts in your mouth and it comes in hundreds of flavour."

"Okay, you got me. When are we going?" Zaki said, throwing his night cap on the floor.

"How about after you two kids brush your teeth and wash your faces?" He said, looking at Mo and Hanzo. That was all the prompt they needed. Mo bolted out of the room, shrieking. "Last one to the bathroom is a rotten egg!"

"What?! You cheater!" Mo got right on her heel.

"Okay, we should go prepare too." The frog twins beat it out of the room.

Naruto too rose from the bed. Somehow, he felt strangely light and in his mind was not thoughts of the past but plans for the future. The kids needed more clothes for winter. He needed to finish repairing Tonari Ryokan, and damn but it needed a new name too. Tonari Ryokan didn't sound like how a home should be.

He stretched, made the bed, then walked out of the room. The sun shone down his path. A new day began.

* * *

**End Interlude 1**

* * *

So... characterization is my kink. If you want to go for maximum effect while reading this interlude, I recommend listening to the track 'Reflections' from Mass Effect 2 OST.

The name of this interlude is an allusion to its entire structure. From the other cliff of the abyss (I will not say more but can you guess what exactly it alludes to? Shouldn't be difficult). The overarching theme is: the human sin, corruption and the fall, salvation and the start of the quest for redemption.

This interlude and backstory to TF!Naruto was actually intended to be revealed and introduced in the last arc of TF: The birth and death of Konohagakure. It was meant to be both a plot and emotional twist and is the focal point that defines Naruto and Madara's dynamic (why Naruto is so hellbent on getting revenge). But stuffs happened and I had to change the order and transform it into an interlude and character development for Naruto.

The reasons I made this change are two folds: 1/ Subtlety in writing and 2/ Character interpretation and development.

**1/ Subtlety in writing: **

Just as an example, I'm going to tell you something. A week ago I got a review from a reader calling me out on a mistake in my use of words in chapter 3 in regards to Hashirama's father's death. Thing is... that was not a mistake, rather a hint I left for a plot twist further on in the story. This is his/her review:

_saintjimmy84:__ One observation; about midway through this chapter, you have the following sentence about Yoshizawa._

_"He didn't know it and in the many years to come, he still wouldn't known what it was he held in his hands that day: not an unborn foetus, not a parasitic twin, not even an abomination of nature, but the remains of the original body of Naruto Uzumaki."_

_And then you kill Yoshizawa at the end of the chapter. It's an incongruency in the writing, since the implication of this sentence is that Yoshi is still around for many years, during which he failed to figure out the mystery._

And here is my reply to him:

_Sythe:__ You got me. Well... it's not a mistake in writing. Simply an allusion to the true fate of Yoshizawa. He's not dead yet, and he will be there to witness the reunion of Hashirama and Naruto... but it couldn't be said that he's alive either._

_I'm amazed. You're the first one who figured out this tiny hint I left to the readers. And 30 000 + people have read this passage before you._

The exact number of people who have read that passage is 37944. Yep, nearly 40000 people and over two years and he/she's the first one to finally figure out this hint I left. The hint is for a plot twist regarding the fate of Hashirama's father and how he will effect the plot line of TF in arc 3: The birth and death of Konohagakure. Well... I guess it's now no longer a plot twist, but it's fine. It's not like I'm running out of plot twists to lob at my readers (the entire premise of TF is a twist in itself.)

Now this entire thing doesn't actually have anything to do with why I chose to write this interlude now, but it's an example of the kind of subtle writing in Tis Femina. The hint above is neither the only nor the first one I left (a shrewd reader should be able to see a few plot twists in the making from these hints alone).

I use the same kind of subtlety in character development for TF.

**2/ Character interpretation and building: **

In the same week that I got the above review, I got 2 other PMs from two different readers. One remarked that TF!Naruto didn't feel like Naruto at all, more like somebody else who just happened to have the same name (this is not the first time a reader call me out on this). The other PM... praised me for my subtle and nuanced writing on Naruto as an adult character.

For every one PM or review number 2 I got, ten PM 1 will be sent to me. I rarely ever reply to these concerns, preferring the readers draw their own conclusion, but then my PM convo with saintjimmy gave me a thought. Perhaps I have been too subtle in my writing. Maybe sometimes a battle axe does a better job than the scalpel.

And so was born this interlude.

I understand perfectly PM1's point, but I have to respectfully disagree. My reasons are very simple: Are you the same person you were eleven years ago? Canon Naruto is a fifteen years old boy. TF Naruto is twenty six years old man (in his mind, lol! His appearance is a woman). Compared to TF Naruto, Canon Naruto doesn't yet comprehend the stark reality of war and the fallacy of men. Eleven years of experience and sorrow separates them. Canon Naruto is just a boy. TF Naruto is a husband and father.

They are not the same person. To write them as the same person is... well let's say that's failure in character development then. My challenge when writing Naruto is to preserve the core of his character, and then develop him from there, through happiness and grief, maturing past his breaking point.

And here we have the paradox of fanfics: character interpretation and building.

When people read fanfics, they expect that the characters are written as they are in canon (In Character). That's the entire selling point of fanfic. People want to read about characters they love and care for, if not they would have gone for ordinary novels instead. The more OOC a character is, the less likely the readers will become attached to him, her.

But on the other hand, people read fanfic for something different from canon. That's why there are things like for want of a nail fics, peggy sue fics, shipping fics, etc... (you know the drill). If they didn't they would have stuck to canon instead.

So there you have the paradox of fanfic. The premise of all fanfics is different happenings but with the same characters or as close to the same characters as possible. By design, fanfics introduce plotline changes that affect the characters. The characters develop and act on a different path from canon... but they still have to stay the same. Fanfic writer's challenge is to change characters in a believable way.

To do this, good character interpretation and understanding is required. To change something but keep its core the same, you really need a truly deep understanding of a character and what makes them tick. The level varies between fandoms and characters. In fandoms like Harry Potter, the different versions of fanon Harry Potter is just amazing (running the full spectrum from meek to in your face arrogant, all kinds of origins and backgrounds, etc...). Harry Potter fans generally tolerate greater degrees of character changes. This is because Harry himself is a cypher character (meant to act as the stand-in for the readers and is generic... think Bella Swan of Twilight. The fact that Bella is a pure cypher character is the reason why she proves popular with the target audience) and during the story, he developed a great deal. Thus, it's easier for Harry Potter fans to accept a greatly changed fanon Harry for the simple reason that canon Harry is not rigidly defined and is susceptible to changes.

Then we have fandoms like Naruto where the lead character is... extremely iconic and popular for it. This is both good and bad for writers. Good because it's easier to pin down his core character. Bad because people expect him to be exactly as he is in canon and it's hard to introduce any kind of changes without someone screaming 'that's not Naruto' to your face.

And here's the next problem. I probably will get the quack for this, but majority of fans don't actually have a very good understanding of Naruto as a character. You can see this plenty well with Naruto's portrayal in majority of fics. Generally a skin deep copy of the original, exhibits all the required tics but doesn't have the soul of the character. On the other hand, there are fics out there with truly brilliant character understanding and believable changes that get the rocks simply because fans are too attached to the iconic character behavior that they cannot see him change (Every anime Naruto fans know his ramen and dattebayo tics. But how many of them truly look deep into him as a character? Why does he go on? Why does he do the thing he does? What does he make such decision? What is it that he wants most? And if you say he wants to be Hokage most I am going to kick you in the ass. Look deeper, damn you!)

This makes it extremely hard to convince readers if a writer truly wants to explore Naruto to his depth and introduce great changes (which happened in TF. Great plot changes? Check. Great character changes? Check.)

To me, Naruto is... a fascinating character. In terms of possible development, he is extremely mercurial. Sure the main branch Naruto is very defined, but when you examine his dark possibilities: Yami Naruto in the Adventure at Sea arc, Menma in Road to Ninja, you start to realize the sunny version of Naruto we have now (the main branch Naruto) is not the only option. From his history, he is a tragic character, but he doesn't feel tragic because he has not let the sorrow of his past define his behavior (though it is a part of his core. It always will be).

The line between main branch Naruto and Menma then is a simple truly unbearable tragedy. A breaking point, so to say. So far main branch Naruto can remain the character that he is because he still has not encountered something that he could not fight. Not a villain more powerful than he could defeat, but rather an event that puts his own values at odd and he must either change or break.

That is the premise of TF Naruto's changes. Canon Naruto does not know or understand the gravity of leadership role yet. He says he wants to be Hokage, but that's simply a manifestation of his childhood loneliness and his need to be acknowledged by other people. TF Naruto's background forced this change upon him with his duty as a leader during wartime.

Compared to the reality of war, the things that canon Naruto says is just naive, idealistic and admirable yes, but naive all the same. Canon Naruto can still say that because he does not yet have to make the difficult choice of leaders (kill one, save thousands).

TF Naruto does, and that is how and why he becomes the character he is today.

This interlude then is the context of his character. Before this interlude, I inserted many small references in all the chapters regarding his past (his age, eleven years older than canon Naruto, the death of Sakura and his acquisition of her medical knowledge, the death of his son and the decade old war that shaped him)... but... lately I feel that perhaps I've been too subtle. So I put away my scalpel and reach for my battle axe instead.


End file.
